The numbers don’t add up on Buhari’s claim of lifting 5m out of poverty in 3yrs

President Muhammadu Buhari’s claim that some 5 million Nigerians have been lifted out of poverty within his first three years in office is a far cry from reality, going by Businessday analysis of available data. In a bid to demonstrate how well his administration has managed Nigeria’s economy, Buhari, last Thursday, said his administration lifted 5 million citizens out of poverty through the National Social Intervention Programme (NSIP) he established in his first tenure in office. Speaking through Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, at the opening of the Global Youth Employment Forum organised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Abuja, Buhari claimed that with the help of programmes like N-power his administration has made tremendous progress in increasing the number of school enrolments and creating over 2 million direct and indirect opportunities for the populace. While it is unclear how the 76-year old Nigerian president arrived at these figures, his claim of lifting 5 million citizens out of poverty and creating 2 million jobs does not tally with published data from various reputable agencies, including the state-run National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). “The president’s claim seems not to align with current reality in terms of accessible data that is available to measure,” said Ayodeji Ebo, managing director and CEO of Lagos-based investment and financial firm, Afrivest Securities. According to Ebo, as long as growth in the economy continues to lag behind growth in population, more and more people would become impoverished. Data compiled by BusinessDay from various sources show that Africa’s largest economy might have done poorly in the last 5years on key macro-economic indicators that measure improvements in the standard of living of the citizens. These indicators as analysed by Businessday include unemployment rate, GDP per capita, inequality gap, poverty rate, Misery Index and Human Development Index (HDI).

Unemployment

President Buhari was sworn into office on May 29, 2015, after defeatingformer President Goodluck Jonathan. Since 2015, unemployment rate in the country has more than tripled as the country struggles to find its feet after a recession that dented President Buhari’s first term. As of the last data published by the NBS, the calculated unemployment rate jumped from 7.5 percent in first quarter (Q1) 2015 to 23.1 percent in Q3 2018. Similarly, underemployment rate stood at 20.1 percent, and the combined unemployment and underemployment rate was 43.3 percent, NBS said in a report published Wednesday. In nominal terms, a total of 20.9 million Nigerians are unemployed, signalling that about 3.1 million people have entered into the unemployment trap in less than a year. The NBS had earlier in Q4 2017 reported the number of unemployed Nigerians to be 17.8 million. If truly the aforementioned programme by the Buhari government had made the needed impact as claimed, it would have shown in the unemployment data published by the statistical agency.

GDP per capita

GDP per capita is a measure of a country’s economic output that accounts for its number of people. It divides a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by its total population. Put differently, GDP per capita tells how prosperous a country feels to each of its citizens making it the best measurement of a country’s standard of living. When the GPD per capita of a country is increasing, it means the standard of living of the country’s populace is improving and vice versa. GDP per capita growth in Nigeria has been negative since 2015, data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show. It fell from 3.51 percent in 2014 to -0.03, -4.17, -1.79 and -0.67 in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. In nominal terms, it declined from as high as $3,222.69 in 2014 to $2,028.18 in 2018.

Poverty rate

The World Bank defined poverty as living below $1.9 a day. Nigeria under President Buhari’s watch overtook India to become the poverty capital of the world, a 2018 report by the Brooking Institution said. The report put the number of people living below the poverty line in Nigeria to be 87 million (about 44% of its entire population). While countries like India and China have made giant strides in the fight against poverty, about six persons enter into poverty in Nigeria every minute, according to data by the World Poverty Clock, a real-time data that tracks poverty for almost all countries in the world. If the President’s claim were true, it would have shown in the data

Misery Index

A country’s Misery Index is calculated by adding its inflation to the rate of unemployment. The index helps in determining how the average citizen is doing economically. A higher index shows that a country is becoming more miserable. For Nigeria, the Index currently stands at 34.92 percent, an increase from the 17.40 percent in 2015.

Income inequality

Data from the NBS show that consumers’ consumption power has been falling since it rose by 1.5 percent in 2015. Final consumption of households declined by 8 percent from N43.1 trillion in 2014 to N39.66 trillion in 2018. Although the figures provided for 2018 by the statefunded data agency were limited to Q2 2018, Businessday arrived at a full-year figure estimated on an annualised basis. Year on year, the decline in household spending rose 1.45 percent to N43.7 trillion in 2015, but as Nigeria entered its first recession in more than two decades, household spending fell 5.74 percent to N41 trillion in 2016. While the rate of decline slowed in 2017 as households spent N40.78 trillion, the estimates for 2018 suggest a plunge to 2.75 percent.