We’ve taken over 10 million Nigerians out of multidimensional poverty — Presidency

The Presidency has stated that the ongoing government investments in infrastructure have helped lift over 10 million Nigerians out of multidimensional poverty.

This was made known by the Special Adviser to the Presidency on Economic Matters, Tope Fasua in an interview with Channels on Tuesday. 

Fasua explained the central role of infrastructure development in addressing multidimensional poverty, which he described as poverty arising from a lack of access to basic social amenities rather than income alone.

He noted that despite the absence of updated multidimensional poverty data since 2022, his own estimates indicate that the number of Nigerians living in such conditions has dropped significantly.

Fasua said continued investments in infrastructure under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu are key to sustaining this progress and further reducing poverty levels in the country.

“One of the things I’ve been writing on…is the centrality of infrastructure towards reducing multidimensional poverty. Multidimensional poverty is defined as non-debt, non-income poverty and poverty relating to the availability of basic infrastructure. Therefore, the only way you can reduce multidimensional is to fund infrastructure, whether it’s roads and bridges, power infrastructure, including renewable energy, even things like water and other things that people need, schools, education, and health. That is very important for us to do.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t actually updated the multidimensional poverty data since 2022. Every six months, if you ask me. You know, so by now, I think we’ve taken quite a number of people out of multidimension… From my own calculation, about 10 million people have been possibly impacted. Maybe we should be talking about 120 million or even a lot less.”