Nigeria is losing ground on the fight against poverty as the country recorded an increase of 17.9 million people living in multidimensional poverty between 2021 and 2024, according to a new report by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, OPHI,
The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2026 showed that Nigeria reversed gains made in poverty reduction over the previous three years and recorded the largest absolute increase in the number of people living in poverty among the countries covered in the latest update, far ahead of Afghanistan, which recorded an increase of 5.3 million.
The reversal comes after Nigeria made progress between 2018 and 2021, when the proportion of its population living in multidimensional poverty declined from 42.3 per cent in 2013 to 33 per cent in 2021.
However, the figure rose to 38.7 per cent in 2024, while the number of people affected increased from 72.2 million to 90.1 million.
Nigeria was among only five countries in the report where multidimensional poverty increased during the period under review.
Unlike conventional poverty measured based primarily on income, the index assesses overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards.
It classifies people as multidimensionally poor when they experience deprivation in at least one-third of the weighted indicators used in the assessment.
The report’s 2024 headline estimate placed Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty incidence at 48.7 per cent, representing about 113 million people, while 28.7 per cent of the population were classified as living in severe multidimensional poverty.
With these figures, Nigeria ranked second among countries with the largest number of multidimensionally poor people in the report’s country tables, behind India.
The findings also highlighted widespread deprivation in essential services and basic living conditions.
According to the report’s harmonised trend data, 37.6 per cent of Nigerians were multidimensionally poor and lacked access to clean cooking fuel, while 31.3 per cent experienced poverty alongside a lack of electricity.
Similarly, 28.5 per cent lived in inadequate housing, 27 per cent lacked decent sanitation, and 26.8 per cent were multidimensionally poor and had at least one school-age child out of school.
The report noted that all these indicators had worsened compared with their 2021 levels.
The national figures, however, conceal significant disparities across states and regions, with multidimensional poverty incidence ranging from 3.7 per cent to 88.3 per cent.
The report noted that even communities with similarly high poverty levels could experience different forms of deprivation, underscoring the need for interventions tailored to local conditions.
In Yobe State, malnutrition and child mortality were identified as major contributors to multidimensional poverty, while inadequate access to clean water and electricity featured prominently in Sokoto State.
The findings suggest that addressing poverty effectively requires more than nationwide interventions, with policies and investments designed to tackle the specific challenges confronting individual states and communities.
Nigeria’s experience also reflects a wider challenge across sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 616 million of the world’s 1.2 billion multidimensionally poor people, more than all other regions combined.
Despite the scale of the challenge, the report highlighted evidence that substantial progress is achievable, noting that 33 countries have halved their multidimensional poverty levels in less than 15 years.
