Former Statistician-General of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Yemi Kale, has said around 89 million Nigerians, representing 40 percent of the population, are living below the poverty line.
Kale, who now serves as group chief economist and managing director of research and trade intelligence at Afreximbank, spoke at The Platform Nigeria’s Independence Day event themed Rebuilding Our Nation. He described Nigeria as the country with the second-highest number of poor people in the world, after India.
“To grasp the magnitude of this number, we can consider that fewer than 20 of the world’s 195 recognised countries even have a population larger than just Nigeria’s estimated number of poor,” he said.
He warned that these dynamics are worsening and pose a threat to the very promise of independence, which should ensure that every Nigerian has the opportunity to thrive at home. According to him, much of the problem stems from policy missteps and costly delays in implementing reforms. “Key adjustments, some finally underway, should have begun over a decade ago, when warning signs were already evident. Acting sooner would have significantly softened the impact on households and businesses, sparing the economy years of compounding fiscal and inflationary pressures. Instead, distortive monetary and exchange rate policies lingered, eroding investor confidence and choking off investment,” he said.
Kale acknowledged that the recent reforms being implemented are painful but insisted that they are necessary. “There is really no credible alternative,” he noted. He stressed that consistent and integrity-driven execution is crucial to turn Nigeria’s potential into real, broadly shared prosperity that impacts daily lives beyond statistics and speeches.
“The challenge, however, is to ensure that the path of reform is as painless, humane, and well-sequenced as possible,” he said. “But too often in Nigeria this has been overlooked or maybe poorly implemented, resulting in what I think are avoidable hardships.”
He concluded by saying the government’s responsibility is not to avoid reforms but to sustain them while urgently strengthening social protections, ensuring that the transformation is both economically sound and socially just.