These Are The Five Poorest States In Nigeria – NBS

BY CAMI EZENWA

Forget what you think, can you tell the five poor of the poorest states in Nigeria?

You do not need to crack your head, as the National Bureau Statistics (NBS) which is supposed to know has provided you the answer.

This is contained In its “Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS), the basis for measuring poverty and living standards in the country, and in the study, Sokoto, Taraba, Jigawa, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Yobe and Adamawa lead the poorest states in the country.

This is as against Lagos and Delta which emerged the least poor states, in otherwords, the two richest states in the country.

The study which is the latest round of the NLSS after a decade was representative at the state level with a sample size of 22,110 households, focusing on increasing the understanding of living conditions of the Nigerian population.

Though it was conducted by NBS between September of 2018 and October of 2019, the thinking is that not much has changed in terms of the demography.

The survey is used to measure prevalence of poverty and to estimate a wide range of socio-economic indicators, including benchmarking of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Apparently, the poverty index is skewed mainly to the northern states of the country, with 19 states in the region recording an average poverty rate of 58 percent, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show.

This is as against an average of 24.3 percent rate recorded in the 17 states in the southern region, bringing to spotlight the high illiteracy rate and the weak appetite for education in the Northern states of the country, according to BusinessDay analysis.

READ ALSO: Is Delta State Truly The Second Least Poor State In Nigeria?

“There is a strong positive correlation between illiteracy levels and poverty, hence wherever you see a high illiteracy rate there is always a corresponding high level of poverty,” the newspaper quotes Oluwapelumi Joseph, head of investor relations at Lagos- based advisory firm, Africapractice, as saying.

“From a productivity standpoint, there are not many commercial enterprises in the North due to the recurring insecurity, and this has made most states in the region highly dependent on government aid,” Joseph said..

Holistically, four out of every 10 Nigerian or 89.2 million Nigerians have been reported by the NBS to be poor, spending less than N137,430 per year, the equivalent of N376.5 or $1 per day, pushed by states in the North.

Similarly, income inequality, which shows the spread between the haves and the have-nots in the country, was estimated at 35.1 (100 means perfect inequality of expenditure distribution while 0 means perfect equality).

States of Sokoto, Taraba and Jigawa reported the highest poverty incidence in the period with a poverty rate of 87.73 percent, 87.72 percent and 87.02 percent, respectively.

This was followed by Ebonyi, Adamawa and Zamfara with 79.76 percent, 75.41 percent and 73.98 percent.

On the other hand Lagos, Delta, Osun, Ogun and Oyo, all southern states, recorded the least poverty rate at 4.5 percent, 6.02 percent, 8.52 percent, 9.32 percent and 9.83 percent, respectively.

The success of the South in reducing poverty cannot be divorced from its investment in education and health of people in the region, the analysis added.