By Ijendu Iheaka, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
For Odoemelam Amala, a trader in Aba, Abia, a once-profitable ice-block business that sustained his family became a struggle for survival as operating costs rose and household income dwindled.
Amala relied on fuel to produce ice blocks for retailers of drinks and other perishable goods, earning enough to feed his family, educate his children and meet their basic needs.
However, the removal of fuel subsidy in 2023 and the subsequent rise in operating costs placed pressure on the business, according to the account of his experience.
As his earnings declined, meeting essential expenses, including healthcare, became more difficult.
The situation reportedly worsened when one of his children fell ill and the family could not afford hospital treatment.
According to the account, the child eventually died, highlighting the potentially devastating consequences of poverty when families cannot afford essential healthcare.
Beyond the immediate loss of income, Amala’s experience illustrates how poverty extends to healthcare, education, nutrition, housing and access to other basic services.
This broader understanding of deprivation is central to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, observed annually on Oct. 17 to promote action against poverty and inequality.
For 2026–2028, the UN’s overarching theme is “United for Peace and Human Rights”, with this year’s focus on “Safe Homes for All”.
The focus underscores the importance of safe, adequate and affordable housing in protecting human dignity and enabling people to access education, healthcare and employment.
More importantly, the UN calls for people experiencing poverty to participate meaningfully in developing and implementing policies that affect their lives, rather than remain passive recipients of assistance.
To understand the scale of the challenge, it is necessary to distinguish multidimensional poverty from monetary poverty.
While monetary poverty measures whether individuals or households have income or consumption below a defined poverty line, multidimensional poverty considers overlapping disadvantages in areas such as health, education and living standards.
Experts say these disadvantages may include inadequate nutrition, limited access to healthcare, children being unable to attend school, poor sanitation, unsafe drinking water, inadequate housing and lack of electricity.
In many cases, these deprivations reinforce one another.
A household with inadequate income, for instance, may struggle to afford nutritious food and medical treatment, while poor health can reduce its ability to work and earn a living.
Consequently, income alone may not fully capture the extent of a household’s deprivation.
In Nigeria, the scale of the problem is reflected in the National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS) 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report, which estimated that 133 million people, representing 63 per cent of the population, were multidimensionally poor.
The survey, conducted between November 2021 and February 2022, covered more than 56,000 households across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
It assessed deprivations in health, education, living standards and access to essential services.
Further analysis revealed marked regional and residential disparities.
About 86 million multidimensionally poor people lived in Northern Nigeria, while nearly 47 million lived in the South.
Similarly, 72 per cent of rural residents experienced multidimensional poverty, compared with 42 per cent of urban residents.
These differences point to persistent gaps in infrastructure, public services and economic opportunities, especially in underserved communities.
Beyond the national survey, more recent estimates using a different methodology also highlight the scale of the challenge.
The 2026 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), estimated that Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty rate rose from 33 per cent in 2021 to 38.7 per cent in 2024.
The report estimated that 90.1 million Nigerians were multidimensionally poor in 2024, compared with 72.2 million in 2021.
Globally, the report estimated that 1.2 billion people across 108 countries were living in acute multidimensional poverty, including 617 million children.
About 83 per cent of those affected lived in rural areas.
Experts insist that these figures, however, require careful interpretation because the national MPI survey and the global index use different methodologies and reference periods.
According to them, their estimates should therefore not be treated as directly interchangeable.
Monetary poverty estimates provide another perspective on the economic pressures facing Nigerian households.
A September 2026 report by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), titled Deconstructing Poverty and Inequality in Nigeria, estimated that poverty rose from 40.1 per cent in 2018–2019 to 56.2 per cent in 2022–2023, leaving about 126 million Nigerians below the national poverty line.
The report linked the increase largely to weaker economic growth and declining consumption per person.
It recommended stronger productive capacity, improved agricultural productivity, better infrastructure and more effective social protection.
Taken together, the different estimates underline the need for policies that improve both household purchasing power and access to essential services.
Against this background, Nigeria’s considerable human and natural resources raise a fundamental question; why has the country struggled to translate its wealth into better living conditions for millions of households?
A public affairs analyst, Mr Nnamdi Elekwachi, said Nigeria had the resources and productive population needed to achieve broader prosperity.
“Nigeria has no business being described as the Poverty Capital of the World because it has abundant human and natural resources, including a hardworking and productive population, to unlock its growth potential,” he said.
Elekwachi, however, attributed persistent poverty to governance failures, corruption, regulatory capture, policy inconsistency and the ineffective conversion of national resources into household welfare.
“Nigeria has the means to be a great nation with majority of its population living well above the poverty line but what it lacks is the ability to convert those means into shared prosperity because leakages swallow value before it reaches households,” he said.
According to him, corruption and weak accountability undermine public service delivery and reduce the resources available for programmes that could improve living conditions.
In practical terms, he argued, poor management of public resources could contribute to inadequate infrastructure, limited employment opportunities and poor access to essential services.
To illustrate this concern, Elekwachi cited the solid minerals sector, where he said illegal mining and weak revenue collection limited the country’s ability to benefit fully from its mineral wealth.
He noted that deposits of gold, lithium, tin and other minerals offered opportunities for economic diversification.
However, inadequate oversight and illegal operations could limit the benefits to the wider economy.
He argued that improvements in national revenue and selected economic indicators would have limited effects on households if they did not translate into affordable food, reliable income, accessible healthcare and better living conditions.
The consequences are especially concerning for vulnerable groups, including children, older people, rural households and communities affected by insecurity.
For instance, the Director-General of the National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC), Medinat Akinyemi-Obe, recently said at an event in Abuja that many Nigerians went to bed hungry, not because the country lacked resources, but because their needs had been neglected.
For older people, inadequate income and limited access to healthcare can deepen economic insecurity.
Meanwhile, children in poor households may experience poor nutrition, interrupted schooling and inadequate medical care, with consequences that can persist into adulthood.
In this way, poverty can continue across generations when households lack the resources and public support needed to overcome economic shocks.
Prof. Joseph Onuoha, a professor of Economics Education in the Department of Social Science Education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, said poverty occurred when individuals or households lacked sufficient and sustainable resources to meet basic needs and maintain an acceptable standard of living.
He explained that these resources included income, consumption, productive assets, employment opportunities and access to essential services.
“Poverty is therefore not simply the absence of money; it is the inability to command sufficient goods and services to live a decent life.
“Economists measure poverty using indicators such as income, consumption expenditure, and multidimensional deprivation, taking into account the cost of living and household needs,” he said.
Onuoha said addressing Nigeria’s poverty challenge required an integrated strategy combining political accountability, economic transformation and social development.
First, he urged governments at all levels to strengthen transparency, tackle corruption through due process, ensure the effective use of public funds and establish measurable development targets.
He warned that weak implementation could undermine poverty-reduction efforts, especially when programmes failed to reach intended beneficiaries or were not sustained long enough to produce measurable results.
Beyond governance reforms, Onuoha called for measures to control inflation, increase food production, improve electricity and transport infrastructure, support small businesses, expand affordable credit and promote industries capable of creating sustainable employment.
He also recommended greater investment in agriculture, vocational training, digital skills and entrepreneurship to enable young people, women, farmers and informal-sector workers to earn reliable incomes.
According to him, households without stable employment and productive assets can be pushed deeper into deprivation by rising living costs.
Equally important, Onuoha stressed the need for stronger social protection programmes for households affected by economic shocks.
He said governments should invest in accessible, quality education, affordable healthcare, nutrition, safe water, sanitation and decent housing.
He also called for particular attention to underserved rural communities and areas affected by insecurity, where inadequate infrastructure and limited access to essential services could deepen deprivation.
At the community level, he urged universities, traditional institutions, religious organisations, cooperatives and community associations to help identify local needs and implement development programmes.
“My central recommendation is that Nigeria should pursue a people-centred poverty-reduction strategy that measures success by improvements in citizens’ actual living conditions, rather than by government expenditure or economic growth alone,” he said.
To strengthen accountability, he recommended that state and local governments establish measurable poverty-reduction targets, publish implementation results and evaluate progress regularly.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has announced initiatives intended to improve the coordination and delivery of poverty-reduction and social protection programmes.
In March 2026, it launched the One Humanitarian–One Poverty Response System (OHOPRS), designed to coordinate humanitarian assistance and poverty-reduction interventions, reduce duplication and improve support for vulnerable households.
In August, the government unveiled a $1 billion social protection initiative alongside reforms intended to improve beneficiary identification, strengthen coordination and link emergency assistance with longer-term economic recovery.
The initiatives are intended to address fragmentation in existing interventions and improve the targeting of vulnerable households.
Nevertheless, their impact will depend on implementation, coverage, sustainable funding and measurable improvements in living conditions.
The Federal Government also announced plans in July to develop a scorecard tracking poverty, income and inequality to assess whether economic reforms were translating into broader improvements in household welfare.
The proposed indicators include reductions in multidimensional poverty, growth in real income per person and lower inequality.
Their usefulness, however, will depend on the regular publication of reliable data and transparent evaluation.
Ultimately, stakeholders say breaking the cycle of multidimensional poverty requires more than short-term financial assistance.
They call for accountable management of public resources, productive employment, reliable infrastructure, accessible public services and social protection that reaches vulnerable households.
All in all, the 2026 focus on “Safe Homes for All” reinforces the need to include adequate housing in poverty-reduction strategies alongside healthcare, education, sanitation and employment.
For Nigeria, the real test will be whether policies and programmes translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives, enabling families to afford nutritious meals, educate their children, access healthcare and live in safe, decent homes.
