FACT CHECK: Are Nigeria’s unemployment and poverty rates 32.5% and 40% respectively?

Claim: 

Nigeria’s unemployment rate in 2020 was 32.5% and poverty rate in 2021 is 40%

Verdict: 

According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, the fourth quarter unemployment rate for the year 2020 was 33.28% and annual poverty rate was 17.5%, while the poverty rate last updated by the statistical agency was in 2019 with a record of 40.1%. The 2021 poverty rate recorded by World poverty clock was 41%

Full Text: 

At the Ripples Nigeria Dialogue held at Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, last Wednesday, the chairman and keynote speaker of the occasion, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta State made a claim concerning unemployment and poverty rate in Nigeria.

This claim came from his keynote speech while highlighting the indices of bad governance in Nigeria to drive home his point.

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While the executive governor mentioned insecurity, religious bigotry, corruption, lack of accountability, ethnicity and tribalism, he gave a number to the unemployment and poverty rate in Nigeria.

In his words; “unemployment (the rate in Nigeria in 2020 was 32.5%); poverty (the rate in Nigeria in 2021 is 40%, which translates to 80 million”

Verification.

The latest report released by the NBS showed that the last quarter (Q4) of the year 2020 had an unemployment rate of 33.28% while the annual unemployment rate for the year 2020 was 17.5%.

The poverty rate last updated by the statistical agency was in 2019 with a report titled poverty and inequality in Nigeria 2019.

It revealed that 40.1% of the Nigeria population was living below the poverty line, which translates to 82.9 million Nigerians.

The world clock, an open source software that calculates world poverty rate by the seconds, revealed the 2021 poverty rate to be 41% which translates to 86.2 million Nigerians living below the poverty threshold of $1.90 per day.