Yemi Kale, former statistician-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), says about 89 million Nigerians, representing 40 percent of the population, currently live below the poverty line.
Kale, who is now group chief economist and managing director of research and trade intelligence at Afreximbank, made the disclosure at The Platform Nigeria’s Independence Day event themed ‘Rebuilding Our Nation’.
He explained that Nigeria ranks as the country with the second-highest number of poor people in the world, coming only 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.
The economist warned that the poverty crisis is worsening, adding that the trends “threaten the very promise of independence that every Nigerian should have the opportunity to thrive at home”.
He attributed the situation largely to policy missteps and delays in implementing necessary reforms, noting that “key adjustments, some finally underway, should have begun over a decade ago, when warning signs were already evident”.
According to him, earlier action would have softened the impact on households and businesses, sparing the economy years of “compounding fiscal and inflationary pressures”. Instead, he said, distortive monetary and exchange rate policies lingered, undermining investor confidence and discouraging investment.
Kale acknowledged that the series of reforms introduced recently are “challenging and painful”, but insisted “there is really no credible alternative”.
He stressed that consistent and transparent implementation of the reforms is essential to transform Nigeria’s economic potential into tangible and inclusive prosperity.
“The challenge, however, is to ensure that the path of reform is as painless, humane, and well-sequenced as possible,” he added, cautioning that in the past reforms had been poorly executed, leading to “avoidable hardships”.
Kale maintained that the government’s role is not to avoid reforms but to sustain them while urgently strengthening social protections. He emphasised that this would ensure the reform journey remains both economically sound and socially just.
