The World Poverty Clock, on Thursday, revealed that over 105 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty. The World Poverty Clock is a tool to monitor progress against poverty globally and regionally.

It provides real time poverty data across countries. According to the latest report posted on its portal, Nigeria, which has a total population of 205,323,520 people, has 105,097,856, representing 51 per cent, living in extreme poverty.

The grave implication is that these extremely poor Nigerians live below $1.90 or N855 a day. By comparison, this is a further slide in the condition of living of Nigerians as the World Poverty Clock showed that a total of 40.1 per cent of Nigerians lived in extreme poverty as at September 2020. This drastic change, which was recorded in less than two months, might not be unconnected with the impact of coronavirus outbreak on the economy and the well-being of the people.

The latest report also indicates that more men than women have been impoverished in Nigeria. According to available data, about 53,133,553 million men are living below the poverty threshold, while 51,564,303 women are extremely poor. The model also provides a target escape rate that Nigeria must meet to escape extreme poverty. It is set at 0.3 people per second, but Nigeria falls short of this target with -4.4 people escaping poverty per second.

The World Poverty Clock was created by the Vienna-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), World Data Lab. It was launched in Berlin, Germany, at the Republica Conference in 2017. The organisation is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany (New Telegraph)

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