Two dif­fer­ent sto­ries on All Africa today pose two very dif­fer­ent assump­tions on the econ­omy in Nige­ria. Dr. Mag­nus Kpakol head of the poverty reduc­tion pro­gram for the gov­ern­ment of Nige­ria says that the poverty rate is falling. How­ever, the head econ­o­mist at Ahmadu Bello Uni­ver­sity Zaria, Dr. Mike Duru says that the poverty rate is rising.

First from this Daily Trust arti­cle that we found at All Africa, we find Dr. Kpakol’s com­ments.

Daily Trust had reported that in 1980, 28% of Nige­ri­ans were poor; in 1985 the poverty ratio grew to 46% and dropped to 42% in 19992. In 1996, the ratio was 65.6%, in 1990 it was 70% and in 2004 it fell to 54.4%. He said the cur­rent poverty rate is less than 50 per cent and that Nige­ri­ans are richer.

He said though the actual data is col­lated by the National Bureau of Sta­tis­tics which is expected to come up this year.

He said: “The poverty rate has drop because for exam­ple if you look at the econ­omy, and look at what hap­pens in say agri­cul­ture, you will realise that there is growth in the sec­tor last year and that growth in out­put means some­thing hap­pened there. If you look across board, you will see that the over­all GDP growth rate in the econ­omy grew by about 6%.All of that growth took place in the non-oil sec­tor where you have peo­ple get­ting jobs.”

Daily Trust writer Jib­rin Abubakar received quotes from Dr Duru.

Head of Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment of the Ahmadu Bello Uni­ver­sity Zaria Dr. Mike Duru has said that poverty rate is ris­ing in Nigeria.Dr. Duru who spoke to Daily Trust on phone said the qual­ity of lives of Nige­ri­ans is falling. He described as mis­lead­ing equat­ing rise in Nigeria’s Gross Domes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) to fall in poverty.

Pro­vi­sional data from the National Bureau of Sta­tis­tics (NBS) indi­cated that real GDP grew by 8.23 per cent in the fourth quar­ter of 2009, up from 4.50, 7.22 and 7.07 per cent in the first, sec­ond and third quarters.

But the over­all GDP growth for 2009 was pro­jected at 6.90, up from 5.98 in 2008; hence the non-oil sec­tors remain the major dri­ver of the economy.

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