Nigeria’s per capita income to hit 40-year low as economy contracts further –W’Bank

Nigeria’s per capita income, which gauges the average sum of money earned per person in the country, may touch its weakest level in four decades as its economy shrinks further, Shubham Chauduri, World Bank’s country director for Nigeria, said on Monday.

The slump in crude prices has upset balance of payments, government finances as well as remittances from Nigerians in diaspora, Chauduri told a panel at the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, noting that the coming of the coronavirus pandemic brought a double whammy at a time it was reeling from the April oil crash.

“Crisis like this is often what it takes to bring a nation together to have that consensus within the political, business, government, military, civil society to say, we have to do something that departs from business as usual.’

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“And for Nigeria, this is a critical juncture. With the contraction in GDP that could happen this year, Nigeria’s per capita income could be around what it was in 1980 – four decades ago.”

By World Bank data, the per capita income of Africa’s most populous country was about $847.40 in 1980 and amounted to $2,229.9 last year. It touched an all-time peak in 2014.

Chauduri observed 15 million young Nigerians attained working age in the four year period between 2015 and 2019 even though only 27 per cent or 4 million of that population only got the jobs of their desire.

Nigeria slipped into its second recession in four years after its GDP tightened by -3.6% between July and September, marking the second quarter in a row it would see a negative growth.

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