Maryam Uwais, the senior special assistant to the president on social investment programme, said World Poverty Lab used 2012 data in ranking Nigeria in its latest poverty index.
Uwais was speaking at the 25th anniversary of Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) which held in Abuja on Wednesday.
“I want to start by making a small correction regarding the World Bank rating on Nigeria poverty Index. It was not the World Bank rating, rather it was done by the World Poverty Lab,” THISDAY quoted her to have said.
“We engaged them and it turned out that they used statistics from 2012 and they used indicators such as area survey, electricity, the position of energy, vehicle parks, and some others, and that is actually representative.
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“We have actually invited them to come back to do an analysis of what is happening now and it is important to use other issues that are more relevant to Nigerian in terms of developing countries, in terms of consumption.
“We know that it is not about cars or electricity, it’s about consumption, income, malnutrition are indicators of poverty rather than what is utilised.”
Uwais said the best way to measure poverty in Nigeria is to use the multidimensional poverty index.
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“There is the MPI index launched by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and we are hoping that it would be adopted instead of just income and consumption.”
She said 8 million people are currently benefitting from the beneficial cash transfer of the federal government.
As at July 2019, it was estimated that 98 million Nigerians were living in multidimensional poverty.
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