THE administration of President Muhammadu Buhari claimed to have lifted 10.5million Nigerians out of poverty in the last two years but days after the president’s claim, World Bank reports stated that rising prices in the country pushed an estimated seven million Nigerians below the poverty line in 2020 alone.
It will be highest injustice for anybody not to acknowledge PMB’s many programmes to alleviate economic hardship but target citizens have not benefited from the programmes. Reviving the nation’s economy which is the one of the three cardinal promises PMB made before the electorate remain Herculean task as about half of the population live on less than $1 (N500) per day, unemployment rate has risen to 32.5 and also Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty.
Everyday Nigerians lament rising costs of living as food prices soar at 12.56 per cent, the level of poverty in the country is unspeakable. According to the reports by the National Bueau of Statistics, the rise in the food index was broad-based, caused by increase in prices of bread, egg, beans, rice, yam, fish, meat, fruits, and vegetables. In reality, food inflation across the federation is worse than the official bureau figures show. Reduction of poverty efforts will only remain inclusive due to inconsistency in monetary policy, unemployment rate, high rate of money lending and other factors.
Inconsistency in monetary policy contributes highly to inflation and according to the new World Bank Report, Nigeria’s Exchange Rate Policies Fueling Inflation, Affecting Food Prices, Nigeria recently devalued the naira’s exchange rate to the current N411 for every US dollar. However, this new rate still falls short of the parallel market rate of over N500 for every dollar. It is this disequilibrium between the official and the parallel market rates which the World Bank blames for helping cause an upswing in inflationary pressures.
Nigerians are worrying each passing day over the increasing debt burden reached an unprecedented level as it increased by N191 billion in the first quarter of this year, representing a 0.58 percent increase from N32.916 trillion as of December 31, 2020. Lack of clear economic policies scares foreign investment coupled with weak naira while the country slumped into recession twice, financial and economic policies of the administration do not favour the masses that spent hours under the sun to cast their votes for the administration to emerge.
For the administration to reduce the level of poverty in the country, the Federal Government should focus on three policy priorities which include “reducing inflation by implementing policies that support macroeconomic stability, inclusive growth, and job creation; protect poor households from the impacts of inflation; facilitate access to financing for small and medium enterprises in key sectors to mitigate the effects of inflation and accelerate the recovery.”
There has been no government in Nigeria’s history that has enjoyed the citizens’ goodwill like the present administration.
- Abba Dukawa, Kano
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