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NBS faults report on Nigeria’s poverty level, says methodology not ‘appropriate’

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The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday faulted the basis of the recent Brookings Report rating Nigeria over India as the new global extreme poverty capital.

The report cited data from the World Poverty Clock, a web platform designed to provide real-time poverty estimates of all the countries in the world to monitor progress against ending extreme poverty in the world by 2030.

The Statistician General of the Federation, Yemi Kale, in a series of tweets via his official Twitter handle, @sgyemikale, said the methodology adopted by the World Poverty Clock was a forecast which cannot serve as a substitute to the appropriate poverty methodology.

Kale, who was responding to question by the Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Digital/New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi, noted that poverty is calculated internationally using household surveys.

Kale said ” It (World Poverty Clock) uses poverty nos 4 countries that have updated poverty data & for others like Nigeria, it’s essentially modeling/ forecasts which cannot be a substitute for real field work with appropriate poverty methodology. Poverty estimates are computed internationally using HHold surveys”.

Speaking on the basis and impact of a national poverty average, Kale said, “National figures are an aggregation of sub national figures. So one region can pull up or pull down the national average. Thus, a positive national figure doesn’t mean the whole country is doing well and a negative National figure doesn’t mean the whole country is doing badly either”.

When asked on the empirical basis for the realtime data flow of the World Poverty Clock, Kale said, “Models and forecasts and estimates and I guess a few NBS household surveys though they were never designed to compute poverty so are not comprehensive and representative enough so ultimately just estimates based on a lot of assumptions mostly.

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Ogunlesi had sought the Statistician General’s take on the methodology used by the World Poverty Clock which pointed to noted but unreflected disparities in economic conditions between the Southern and the Northern regions of the Nigeria.

The World Poverty Clock on its part acknowledged local data access limitations, noting that the harmonized Nigeria living standards survey could have given a better result than the models used.

“For Nigeria, the general household survey (GHS) from 2012/2013 is used, rather than the harmonized Nigeria living standards survey. It is more recent and believed to be of higher quality.

“The challenges in estimating poverty in Nigeria stem from the fact that Nigeria is not a homogeneous country. There are distinct differences in economic conditions between the South and the North.

“National averages conceal these differences and surveys are not sufficiently representative at the State level to draw firm conclusions.

“However, we believe that poverty has fallen over time along with economic growth in Southern states, while it has been more stubborn in northern States. These differences cannot be factored into our national level calculations, although inequality is Nigeria appears to have risen in recent years.

“Nigeria has also been suffering from civil unrest and conflict in selected Northern areas where Boko Haram has been active. Such unrest will indubitably have a negative impact on poverty, but there is insufficient data to quantify,” the World Poverty Clock stated.

Kale, however, noted that Nigeria, through the NBS and the World Bank, was doing the living standard survey which he referred to as the “appropriate methodology for poverty computation,” adding that the World Poverty Clock was just an opinion which could be “true or false or worse once the proper poverty study is done.”

It would be recalled that the Federal Government, through the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investments, Okechukwu Enelamah, had ealier faulted indices used for the report, stressing that they might have been complied when Nigeria was in recession.

By Oluwasegun Olakoyenikan

 

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