About 75.5 per cent of rural Nigerians are now living below the poverty line, reflecting deepening hardship in the country’s hinterlands, the World Bank, has disclosed.
The disclosure was made in the Bank’s April 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief for Nigeria that paints a grim picture of worsening economic hardship, widening inequality, and persistent underdevelopment across much of the nation.
The report stressed that the situation is significantly worse in rural areas, where economic stagnation, high inflation, and insecurity have exacerbated living conditions, while poverty is widespread among urban populations.
According to the report, “Based on the most recent official household survey data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, 30.9 per cent of Nigerians lived below the international extreme poverty line of $2.15 per person per day in 2018/19 before the COVID-19 pandemic.”;
The report also explained that Nigeria’s enduring regional disparities remained spatially unequal, saying that the poverty rate in northern geopolitical zones was 46.5 per cent in 2018/19, compared with 13.5 per cent for southern ones. Inequality measured by the Gini index was estimated at 35.1 in 2018/19.
Nigeria’s Prosperity Gap — the average factor by which individuals’ incomes must be multiplied to attain a prosperity standard of $25 per day for all — is estimated at 10.2, higher than most peers, despite successive policy interventions, the figures underscore a persistent economic divide across the country.
Children aged 0 to 14 years had a poverty rate of 72.5 per cent, reflecting the scale of deprivation among the youngest segment of the population, as a result of the report’s demographic analysis.
With Nigerians lacking formal education experiencing a poverty rate of 79.5 per cent, it emerges as a significant determinant of poverty, it contrasts with 61.9 per cent for those with primary education and 50.0 per cent for secondary school graduates and only 25.4 per cent of those with tertiary education were considered poor.
The report also drew attention to multidimensional poverty indicators, which further reflect widespread deprivation, stressing that about 30.9 per cent of Nigerians live on less than $2.15 daily, 32.6 per cent lack access to limited-standard drinking water, 45.1 per cent do not have limited-standard sanitation, and 39.4 per cent have no electricity.
The report stated that 17.6 per cent of adults yet to complete primary education, and 9.0 per cent of households reporting at least one school-aged child not enrolled in school as education access remains a challenge.
The report noted that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to reduce extreme poverty had largely stalled, saying that before COVID-19, extreme poverty reduction had almost stagnated, dropping by only half a percentage point annually since 2010.
Living standards of the urban poor are hardly improving, and jobs that would allow households to escape poverty are lacking.
Although the World Bank acknowledged recent economic reforms aimed at stabilising Nigeria’s macroeconomic outlook, it warned that persistently high inflation continues to undermine household purchasing power, particularly in urban areas where incomes have not kept pace with rising costs.
The Bank called for urgent policy action to shield vulnerable groups from inflationary shocks and to drive job creation through more productive economic activities in light of the worsening situation.
