“With leadership and a sense of purpose, we can lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years,” the President declared. It is heartening, however, that rather than downplaying the existence of poverty, the President is, once again, putting it in the front burner. The Brookings Institution, in a recent World Poverty Clock, estimated that 87 million Nigerians were living in extreme poverty. According to the organisation, Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty in the world. According to Brazil’s National Institute of Applied Economics Research (IPEA), the poverty incidence rate declined from 35.8 to 21.4 per cent.

Source: The Guardian June 23, 2019 03:56 UTC