Ninety-Thousand Naira? Most Nigerians Don’t Earn That. Economist Agrees: We’re Still Poor.
By: Akinde S. Oluwaseun
The World Bank just dropped a truth bomb, recently confirming what most people already feel: over 100 million Nigerians are still living below the poverty line. Hard to swallow, especially when we constantly hear claims that the economy is finally “stable.”
But Dr. Tijjani Ahmad, a senior lecturer and a research fellow, agrees totally. He pulled out the World Bank’s standard. Poverty, according to them, means living on less than two dollars a day. Two dollars. Convert that. Today, that’s about ₦3,000 every single day. Do the quick maths. That’s roughly ₦90,000 in a month.
Think about that figure. Dr. Ahmad asks the relevant, uncomfortable question: How many people actually earn ₦90,000 here? Not many. Even some folks with formal employment don’t reach that benchmark. He estimates around 60 percent of us are living this way. It is a major crisis.
Yes, okay, we see the macro indicators. GDP is going up. Unemployment supposedly shrinking. The Naira, maybe, stabilizing a bit. Great for the big picture. But Dr. Ahmad points out the obvious flaw. These gains, they are just “macro.” Big numbers. Ordinary Nigerians? They don’t feel it yet. Economic growth is about the size of the national wallet. Development is when that money begins to impact people’s lives. We’re still waiting.
There is another layer of complexity, too. The North is significantly poorer than the South. Why? Literacy is lower there. Most economic activity up North is informal—trading, primary production—unlike the South that got better, more formal service jobs. And dependency? It’s brutal. You find one man with three or four wives and twenty children, and only one person is earning income for all of them. Family size is smaller in the South, so poverty’s effect is less sever.
The policies made things much worse. Subsidies removed. Naira floated. Huge mistake without immediate remedial relief. The exchange rate went crazy, from sub-₦1,000 to over ₦1,500 very fast. Those two moves, they crushed living standards immediately. Also, let us not forget history. The last administration printed money like crazy, weakening the currency and draining reserves. We inherited massive debt. A mess.
The current government is trying. They cannot bring back the subsidy; Nigeria simply lack the funds for that. But they are attempting to stabilize the chaos. Dr. Ahmad is clear: progress isn’t real until it helps people pay their bills. Until then, these economic gains? They mean absolutely nothing.
