100 million Nigerians live in abject poverty – World Bank

The World Bank has said that about 100
million Nigerians currently live in abject
poverty. The Country Director of the World Bank
for Nigeria, Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly,
disclosed this in Enugu on Tuesday at the
bank’s Country Programme Portfolio
Review. She had revealed that the World Bank’s
present contribution to the development
of Nigeria’s economy remained at $
5.34bn. Marie further asserted that, about 8.33
per cent of the total number of people
living in penury in the world were
Nigerians, affirming that the bank was
planning to intervene in a bigger way by
2030, in order to reduce the poverty level. She said, “1.2 billion people live in
destitution out of which 100 million are
Nigerians. Inequality is rising in many
developing nations. “For this reason, the World Bank’s
corporate perspective has shifted more
strategically in the past year. The World
Bank wants to galvanise international and
national support around two goals: to end
extreme poverty in a generation and to push for greater equality. “To end extreme poverty, the World Bank
Group’s goal is to decrease the
percentage of people living on less than $
1.25 a day from 20 per cent today to
three per cent by 2030. “The goal is to promote income growth of
the bottom 40 per cent of the population
in each country. In Nigeria, 63 per cent of
the population live on less than $1.25 a
day.” Speaking further, she said the World Bank
was one of the biggest development
agencies around the world that has
provided assistance to Nigeria, but
however regretted that the contribution
of the bank to Nigeria was very small compared to the nation’s budget,
emphasising on the need to review it’s
contribution to the country.