President Muhammadu Buhari on
Saturday said his government has lifted
10.5 million Nigerians out of poverty in
the last two years.
In his speech delivered to mark the
nation’s Democracy Day on June 12, the
president said those the government
lifted out of poverty include farmers,
artisans, market women, and small-
scale traders.
“Our overall economic target of lifting
100 million Nigerians out of poverty in
10 years is our goal notwithstanding
COVID-19,” Mr Buhari said.
“In the last two years we lifted 10.5
million people out of poverty – farmers,
small-scale traders, artisans, market
women and the like.
“I am very convinced that this 100
million target can be met and this
informed the development of a National
Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy.
The specific details of this accelerated
strategy will be unveiled shortly.”
By referencing the last two years, Mr
Buhari refers to the period between June
2019 and June 2021.
Interestingly, the president made a
similar reference to the government’s
poverty alleviation plans in his
Democracy Day speech two years ago.
“In face of (these) challenges, our
Government elected by the people in
2015 and re-elected in March has been
mapping out policies, measures and
laws to maintain our unity and at the
same time lift the bulk of our people out
of poverty and onto the road to
prosperity,” Mr Buahri said in June
2019.
“This task is by no means unattainable.
China has done it. India has done it.
Indonesia has done it. Nigeria can do it.
These are all countries characterized by
huge burdens of population. China and
Indonesia succeeded under authoritarian
regimes. India succeeded in a
democratic setting. We can do it.

“With leadership and a sense of
purpose, we can lift 100 million
Nigerians out of poverty in 10 years.”
But how true is the new claim of lifting
10.5 million Nigerians out of poverty in
the last two years?
Poverty Data
The last poverty survey from the
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)
showed that 40 percent of the Nigerian
population, or almost 83 million people,
live below the poverty line.
According to the NBS ‘2019 Poverty and
Inequality in Nigeria’ report , which was
based on data from the Nigerian Living
Standards Survey conducted in
2018-2019 with support from the World
Bank’s Poverty Global Practice, the
nation’s poverty line was put at 137,430
naira ($381.75) per year.
In 2019, however, the World Poverty
Clock put the number of people living in
extreme poverty in Nigeria at 77.9
million or 39 per cent of the population,
while the country’s total population
stood at 199 million. By 2020, the
number of people living in extreme
poverty had jumped to 84.8 million,
representing 41% of the population.
In June 2021, checks by PREMIUM
TIMES show that the number of
Nigerians living in extreme poverty
according to the World Poverty Clock
has increased slightly to 86.8 million,
representing 41% of the nation’s 209
million population.
In effect, the data from the World
Poverty Clock shows that within the two-
year period referenced by Mr Buhari, at
least 10 million Nigerians slipped into
extreme poverty, rather than come out of
it as the president claimed.
Earlier in June 2018, Nigeria overtook
India as the country with the largest
number of people living in extreme
poverty, as an estimated 87 million
Nigerians, or around half of the
country’s population, were reported to
be living on less than $1.90 a day.
In October 2018, in its second-ever
Commitment to Reducing Inequality
(CRI) index compiled by Development
Finance International (DFI) and Oxfam,
Nigeria placed bottom in a ranking of
157 nations. The CRI Index ranked the
commitment of national governments to
reducing the gap between rich and poor
citizens by measuring three factors
considered “critical” to reducing the gap,
including social spending, tax policies
and labor rights. At the time of the
report, Nigeria ranked bottom of the
index for the second consecutive year.

Nigeria market street [PHOTO CREDIT:
Council on Foreign Relations]
Poverty Alleviation
In his new claim on June 12, President
Buhari specifically listed the 10 million
Nigerians the government lifted out of
poverty to include farmers, artisans,
market women and small-scale traders.
The two major programmes touted to
have lifted the farmers, artisans and
market women out of poverty are the
Anchors’ Borrowers Programme
(specifically for farmers) and the
National Social Investment Programme
(for others).
“In the Agricultural sector, for instance,
the Anchor Borrowers Programme
resulted in sharp decline in the nation’s
major food import bill from $2.23billion
in 2014 to US$0.59billion by the end of
2018,” the president said in his speech.
He added that his vision of pulling 100
million poor Nigerians out of poverty in
10 years has been put into action and
can be seen in the National Social
Investment Programme, “a first in Africa
and one of the largest in the world
where over 32.6m beneficiaries are
taking part.”
PREMIUM TIMES found that despite the
government’s exaggerated claim about
the impact of these poverty alleviation
initiatives, the two programmes
(Anchors Borrowers and SIP) have been
dogged by allegations of shoddy
practices, distrust, fraud, among others.
Anchors Borrower Programme (ABP)
The programme thrust of the ABP is the
provision of farm inputs in kind and
cash (for farm labour) to smallholder
farmers to boost production and
stabilise inputs supply to agro-
processors. Each farmer is given a loan
of N250,000 per hectare of rice for land
cultivation plus inputs such as herbicide,
fertilisers and water pumps. At harvest,
farmers are expected to sell their
produce to anchor or off-takers; the
anchor will then pay the cash equivalent
of the produce into the farmers’ bank
accounts.
But in 2018, a PREMIUM TIMES
investigation revealed that claims by the
Nigerian government that beneficiary
farmers who travelled to Hajj or married
additional wives had been lifted out of
poverty was misleading because the
farmers may not have done so from the
proceeds of actual farming but from
their share of the over N55 billion
disbursed by the government for the
Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP),
which the farmers thought was largesse
for voting in Mr Buhari.
There have also been reports of loan
default, distrust, apathy and
disagreement between the Nigerian
Central Bank and farmers, resulting in
litigations.
The SIP on its part has been riddled
with so much controversies and
allegations of fraud that the leadership
of the National Assembly in 2020 faulted
its implementation.
The senate specifically expressed
dissatisfaction with the model adopted
by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs,
particularly its claims that it used a
World Bank model to determine the
beneficiaries.
Related closely to the SIP among the
government’s poverty alleviation
programmes is the Cash Transfer
Scheme, which has equally been trailed
by issues of transparency in the
selection and disbursement of the funds
to the beneficiaries.
In essence, PREMIUM TIMES found that
although the poverty alleviation
initiatives of the government have been
commended in some quarters, the
implementation phases have been
riddled with allegations of fraud and
faulty models. The government,
therefore, may be having an
exaggerated estimation of their impact,
as available data do not support
government’s claims of poverty
reduction.
Conflicting Details
Despite the Nigerian government’s
claims of lifting 10.5 million out of
poverty in the last two years, the World
Bank said in January that the macro-
micro simulations showed that more
than 10 million Nigerians could be
pushed into poverty by the economic
effects of the COVID-19 crisis alone.
In its report , the bank emphasised that
were the Covid-19 crisis not to have hit,
“the poverty headcount rate—as per the
national poverty line—would remain
virtually unchanged at a little over 40%,
although the number of poor people
would be set to rise from 82.9 million in
2019 to 90.0 million in 2022 due to
natural population growth.”
“Yet with the economic effects of the
COVID-19 crisis, the national poverty
rate is instead forecast to jump from
40.1% in 2019 to 45.2% in 2022,
implying that 100.9 million Nigerians will
be living in poverty by 2022,” the report
said.
“Taking the difference between these
two scenarios shows that the COVID-19
crisis alone is forecast to drive an
additional 10.9 million people into
poverty by 2022.”
In his speech, Mr Buhari also identified
poverty and youth unemployment as
underlying drivers of insecurity in the
country. Nigeria’s unemployment rate
rose to 33.3% between 2018 and 2020,
according to the statistics bureau. The
nation also slipped into yet another
recession within the period, just as
inflation remains skyrocketed amid
sharp increases in food prices.
Earlier in 2019, a World Bank report
listed several African countries that
made impressive gains in reducing
poverty. The list included Tanzania,
Chad, Congo Rep., Burkina Faso, CongO
DRC, Ethipia, Namibia, Mozambique,
Rwanda and Uganda.
But Nigeria was never mentioned in the
list.
Conclusion
Given that Nigerians whom the Buhari
government claimed it purportedly lifted
out of poverty (farmers, traders, artisans
etc) operate in the informal sector, there
are no verifiable data from the nation’s
statistics bureau to support Mr Buhari’s
assertions.
Rather, a World Bank report said that
Nigeria’s poverty rate within the period,
which would have remained “virtually
unchanged” had the Covid-19 crisis not
occurred, would jump upwards due to
the effect of the pandemic.
Additionally, the World Poverty Clock
also showed a rise in the number of
Nigerians that slipped into extreme
poverty within the period.
Therefore, President Muhammadu
Buhari’s claim of lifting 10.5 million
people out of poverty is not supported
by data. It is grossly misleading.
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/467708-fact-check-buharis-claim-on-lifting-10-5-million-people-out-of-poverty-misleading.html

What about counting bandits and terrorists and their families that have been alleviated from poverty through the ransom and empowerment by this administration. Were they added by premium times?

this govt and lies

What does the APC government know if not lies and preventing protests.
If they are aware you are going to protest, they will quickly arrange jobless guys they claim to have lifted from poverty to organise counter protest after giving them 1k each.

Shame on Nigerians.