Nearly seven in 10 Nigerians living in rural areas are poor, while the North-West and North-East bear the heaviest burden of deprivation, according to a new United Nations report.
The 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, estimates that 113 million Nigerians experience overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards.
The report puts the proportion of poor people in rural communities at 68.9 per cent, compared with 24.8 per cent in urban areas. Severe poverty is also much more prevalent in rural communities, affecting 45.1 per cent of residents against 9.3 per cent in towns.
The report identified the North-West and North-East as the regions with the highest concentration of poverty in the country.
It also found that the average poor Nigerian is deprived in 55 per cent of the indicators used to measure health, education and living standards, while 28.7 per cent of Nigerians are classified as severely poor.
The findings point to a reversal of earlier progress in reducing multidimensional poverty. According to the report, the proportion of Nigerians classified as poor fell from 42.3 per cent in 2013 to 33 per cent in 2021, before rising to 38.7 per cent in 2024 when measured on a comparable basis.
“That is nearly 18 million more poor people: three-quarters from a higher rate, one quarter from population growth,” the report stated.
Access to basic household services remains a major challenge. The report identified clean cooking fuel and electricity as the largest areas of deprivation, with 47.4 per cent of Nigerians classified as poor and lacking clean cooking fuel, while 37.6 per cent are poor and lack electricity.
“These are gaps that policy knows how to close,” the UN said, pointing to areas where targeted interventions could improve living conditions.
The findings come amid a broader global increase in acute multidimensional poverty. The report estimates that 1.2 billion people worldwide live in acute poverty, 51.5 million more than in the previous year.
UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo described the increase as a “wake-up call for the world”.
“Behind these figures are 1.2 billion people facing hardships that reinforce one another: hunger, missed schooling and a lack of clean water or electricity. This is unacceptable,” he said.
More than half of the people living in acute poverty globally are children.
However, the report cautioned that population growth contributed to the increase in the global total and that updated data were available for only 13 of the 108 developing countries covered.
Despite the overall rise, 33 countries have halved the share of their populations living in multidimensional poverty over the past 15 years, including six in sub-Saharan Africa. China and Vietnam were among the countries cited for making rapid progress.
The index measures overlapping disadvantages rather than income alone, examining how people experience deprivation in areas such as health, schooling, electricity and household living conditions.
Discussion0