THE POLITICS OF POVERTY NUMBERS

SOLA AFOLAYAN argues why Nigeria must stop mistaking projections for outcomes, and start governing poverty as a system

Nigeria’s poverty debate has drifted into a dangerous simplification. A single figure appears, detached from its assumptions, repeated until it hardens into fact, and then deployed as proof of inevitability or failure. It is emotionally compelling. It is also analytically shallow.

When the media headlines projections made by consulting firms, such as the recent PwC publication Nigeria Economic Outlook 2026, which stated that 141 million Nigerians will be poor, the figure is often treated as a definitive account of lived reality rather than what it actually is: a projection based on assumptions about economic conditions, policy effectiveness, and exposure to shocks. That distinction matters, because projections are not measurements, and assumptions are only assumptions.

This piece is not an attempt to downplay poverty. It is an attempt to restore clarity to how poverty is understood, debated, and governed.

A poverty measurement is derived from household-level data collected at a specific point in time, using a defined methodology and threshold. It tells us what was observed. A poverty projection, by contrast, extends past trends forward often in a straight line to estimate what might happen if key conditions remain unchanged. It assumes that household behaviour does not change, policy design and scale do not improve, efficiency of beneficiary targeting remains static, shocks recur with similar intensity, and social protection systems remain fragmented.

Straight-line projections are useful as warnings, but they are not neutral. They embed pessimism into forecasts and then present those assumptions as data-backed certainty. Allowing this instrumental use of poverty statistics to dominate public discourse particularly in a pre-election year undermines serious policy engagement.

Poverty is not a single condition. It is an aggregation of deprivations that interact over time. Two households can fall below the same poverty line for entirely different reasons and therefore require different policy responses. One may be temporarily poor due to food price shocks. Another may be structurally trapped by low education, poor health access, unsafe housing, and lack of productive assets.

Assuming equivalence based solely on headline figures results in imprecise beneficiary targeting, suboptimal allocation of resources, and weak poverty exit strategies. When policy is guided by a single metric, poverty is managed rather than reduced.

Given that monetary poverty and multidimensional poverty do not fully overlap, across countries, large groups of people are poor by one measure and not the other. Some households have income but lack essential services. Others lack income today but possess capabilities and assets that make their poverty transitory. Evidence from countries such as the United States illustrates partial overlap, reinforcing the need for complementary measurement frameworks. In its latest report, the US Census Bureau cited 12.3% of Americans are income poor, 15% were MPI/MDI poor, while 8.3% are poor in both measures.

Complementing monetary measures, Nigeria’s sub-national Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report (2022) provides the most updated and verifiable poverty numbers. It shows how people are poor, not just how many. It provides federal and state governments with insight into how to allocate resources by sector and geography based on actual deprivation patterns. Crucially, it enables coordination across ministries and sub-national governments by turning poverty into a shared, measurable outcome.

This is why serious governments use MPI not merely to report poverty, but to design policy, track progress, and hold institutions accountable. India, with a population of over 1.2 billion, has significantly used the MPI as a crucial tool to track and achieve substantial poverty reduction. The country nearly halved its MPI value, moving 415 million people out of multidimensional poverty in 15 years (2005/06-2019/21).

Nigeria’s poverty debate, however, often jumps prematurely to funding. Can we afford this? Where will the money come from? These are the wrong questions.

When social protection spending: cash transfers, food interventions, school feeding, health subsidies, education support, livelihood programmes, humanitarian response, pensions, fuel mitigation measures, and shock-related relief, is aggregated across Ministries, Departments and Agencies, it already represents one of the largest functional expenditures in the national system. Fragmentation makes large spending appear small and serious effort appear ineffective. Integrated systems, by contrast, allow governments to pool resources, model trade-offs, run microsimulations, assess budget incidence, and prioritise interventions that reduce deprivation fastest and prevent relapse.

Effective social protection answers one central question: what happens to a household over time?

This is where Ultra-Poor Graduation approaches matter. There are some beneficiaries who remain in the Nigeria National Social Register since 2016- not improving in livelihoods, nor exiting to make room for others. Graduation approach is the answer. Originally developed by BRAC in Bangladesh, the Graduation approach is a holistic framework designed to transition the world’s most vulnerable populations into self-sufficiency. The programme provides a “big push” through six core components: the transfer of a productive asset (such as livestock), technical skills training, temporary consumption support, access to savings, health education, and intensive weekly coaching.

Rigorous evaluations by J-PAL affiliates across diverse contexts, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru, demonstrate the model’s extraordinary efficacy: In Bangladesh, participants saw a 38% increase in earnings four years after the initial asset transfer. Long-term data shows these benefits persist even 11 years later, with significant gains in self-employment and consumption. In West Bengal, India, households experienced a five-fold increase in livestock revenue and a 30% rise in wages as women transitioned from casual farm labour to more stable non-farm occupations and small businesses.

Beyond financial metrics, research in Ghana found that integrating cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) into the model significantly improved participants’ mental health and socioemotional skills, while studies in India noted marked improvements in food security and physical health a decade after the program ended. The success of this evidence-based model has sparked massive global expansion. BRAC has reached over 2.3 million households in Bangladesh and more than one million across 14 other countries. Furthermore, the World Bank estimates that over 400 economic inclusion programs inspired by this approach have now reached approximately 70 million people worldwide.

Likewise, Nigeria has piloted the Graduation Approach. The country’s National Social Safety Nets Programme (NASSP) livelihood pilot programme: an abridged version of the Graduation model, was delivered in six states and 12 LGAs, reaching over 8,000 households. Families received transfers, savings mobilisation, training, mentoring, and productive grants. The results were transformative: household earnings rose by 49.6%, enterprises increased by 20%, non-agricultural assets grew by 48%, and households hired more workers hence, employment grew by 72%. Women also reported reduced depression and anxiety. NASSP is Nigeria’s largest social safety nets programme- by funds: USD800 million, and reach: 19.7million Households; 70.9 million individuals; 228,000 communities; 8,000 wards and 774 LGAs.

The NASSP is in its project closure stage and currently negotiating next phase design. Nigeria has an opportunity to embed evidence-based poverty exit pathways such as the Graduation Approach, rather than perpetuate cycles of relief.

There is also a nagging leadership gap.

No single political actor today has the convening power to mobilise federal and state actors, nor the authority to align spending, demand compliance, or insist that social protection investments produce durable exits from poverty rather than temporary relief. This is a governance failure.

The strongest lesson from countries that have reduced multidimensional poverty at scale is institutional rather than technical. Where poverty reduction worked, it was politically led. Coordination was enforced from the centre with state buy-in. Ministers were accountable for outcomes, not activities. Data was public. Bottlenecks were addressed deliberately. Poverty ceased to be everyone’s rhetorical priority and no one’s operational responsibility.

Committees cannot do this. Technical working groups cannot do this. Goodwill does not survive political pressure.

Nigeria needs a Coordinating authority for Social Protection and Poverty Reduction, whether as a ministerial role or located at the Presidency. This role should come with the authority to align programmes and budgets across MDAs, the convening power to compel ministerial and state compliance, and responsibility for national poverty outcomes. This is about creating a centre of gravity for a sector that already consumes vast public resources but delivers far less than it should.

This matter is of urgent national concern. Nigeria goes to the polls early next year. This leaves roughly 13 months for the current administration to demonstrate that reform is not only macro-economic but felt. “Renewed hope” must now translate into renewed growth that households experience.

This is the window in which the common citizen must feel stability, the shrinking middle class must feel protection from sudden downward mobility, and micro-businesses must feel supported rather than exposed.

No sector can deliver this impact faster or at greater scale than coordinated social protection, because it touches consumption, human capital, livelihoods, and shock response simultaneously. A shock-resilient economy is built from shock-resilient people.

The choice before Nigeria is clear. It can continue to project, spend large sums in small pieces, and debate numbers. Or it can recognise a simple truth: there is a governance gap. The coming election will not be determined by projections or promises, but by whether ordinary Nigerians feel more socio-economically secure than they were before.

Fragmentation cannot deliver that. Coordination can. And coordination requires political leadership strong enough to make poverty reduction not everyone’s talking point, but someone’s responsibility.

Afolayan is a social protection and poverty governance specialist with over 25 years experience working on multidimensional poverty analysis, integrated safety nets, and graduation-based pathways out of poverty in Nigeria