The Nigerian government has estimated that at least 11 million citizens could be pushed below the poverty line in 2022 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Minister of Finance Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, stated this on Tuesday at the National COVID-19 Summit in Abuja.
Represented by the Director-General of Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, the minister explained that the pandemic had worsened the recession, which has pushed an additional 6.6 million Nigerians into poverty in 2020.
According to her, before the pandemic, about two million Nigerians were expected to fall into poverty by 2020 as population growth outpaced economic growth.
The pandemic, he said, jerked up the number, bringing the total newly poor to 8.6 million in the same year.
“This implies an increase in the total number of the poor in Nigeria from about 90 million in 2020 to about 109 million in 2022,” she said.
