Yemi Kale, former statistician-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), says approximately 89 million people, or 40 percent of Nigeria’s population, live below the poverty line.
Kale, chief economist and managing director of research and trade intelligence at Afreximbank, spoke at The Platform Nigeria’s Independence Day event titled ‘Rebuilding Our Nation’.
According to the economist, Nigeria has the second-highest number of poor people in the world, after India.
“To grasp the magnitude of this number, we can consider that fewer than 20 of the world’s 195 recognised countries even have a population larger than just Nigeria’s estimated number of poor,” he said.
“And these dynamics are compounding. Together, these trends threaten the very promise of independence that every Nigerian should have the opportunity to thrive at home.
“So what went wrong? Well, there are many reasons, but a large part of it lies in policy missteps and costly delays in implementing needed reforms.
“Key adjustments, some finally underway, should have begun over a decade ago, when warning signs were already evident.
“Acting sooner would have significantly softened the impact on households and businesses, sparing the economy years of compounding fiscal and inflationary pressures.
“Instead, distortive monetary and exchange rate policies lingered, eroding investor confidence and choking off investment.”
Kale emphasised the need of recent reforms, stating that “there is really no credible alternative” despite their difficulties.
The former NBS chief stated that persistent and integrity-driven implementation of the reforms will transform Nigeria’s potential into genuine, broadly shared wealth, affecting daily lives beyond numbers and speeches.
“The challenge, however, is to ensure that the path of reform is as painless, humane, and well-sequenced as possible,” he said.
”But too often in Nigeria this has been overlooked or maybe poorly implemented, resulting in what I think are avoidable hardships.”
Kale said that the government’s responsibility is not to prevent these reforms, which he believes are unavoidable.
Rather, the Afreximbank managing director stated that the government’s job is to maintain the policies while urgently increasing social protections, ensuring that the transition process is both economically viable and socially just.
