A member of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary Policy, Aloysius Uche Ordu has lamented that the number of Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty may double by 2050 if the economy continues its sluggish growth.
Ordu said this in his personal statement at the February MPC meeting.
The MPC member was reacting to the current hardship on Nigerians as a result of the reforms of the President Bola Tinubu-led government.
Inflation was measured at 31.7 per cent in February. Food inflation rose to 37.9 Per cent due to the higher fuel and transportation costs and increased insecurity in food-producing areas.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 133 million Nigerians are in multidimensional poverty.
Ordu said, “To address the associated challenges would thus require a whole of government approach to map out and to execute a program of economic diversification and structural transformation.
“A robust revival of Nigeria’s economy is needed simply to prevent the number of poor people from increasing beyond the current 133 million multidimensionally poor in 2022 (National Bureau of Statistics).”
The Nigerian economy has witnessed slow growth. The annual GDP growth rate in 2022 stood at 3.10 per cent, from the 3.40 per cent reported in 2021.
In 2023, the economy recorded growth of 2.74 per cent, worse than the 2022 growth rate.
He opined that, “Based on the performance of comparable lower-middle-income countries, even an ambitious growth target of 6 to 7 percent throughout the next two and half decades would still leave millions of poor people by 2050, when Nigeria will rank as the third most populous country in the world.
“More troubling, if growth continues at around the current 3 percent a year, the number in absolute poverty would likely double by 2050.”