Nigeria's number of extremely poor grow by 4m to 91.6m according to World Poverty Clock

NIGERIA'S number of extremely poor people have increased by 4m over the last year to a staggering 91.6m according to the latest survey published by the World Poverty Clock which indicates that about half of the country's population now live in extreme poverty.

Last June, the World Poverty Clock had named Nigeria the poverty capital of the world when it revealed that the country had 87m people living in poverty. In its latest report, new figures show that an additional 4m Nigerians have since fallen under the poverty line and that six Nigerians become poor every minute.

Highly respected, the World Poverty Clock is a tool used to monitor progress against poverty globally. It uses publicly available data on income distribution, production, and consumption, provided by various international organisations, most notably the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

According to the World Poverty Clock which was created by Vienna-based World Data Lab, 91.16m Nigerians were living below a dollar a day as of February 13, 2019. The World Bank says a person can be said to be living in extreme poverty if they live below the poverty line of $1.90 which translates to N693.5 per day.

Last year, President Muhammadu Buhari's government rejected the report, insisting that it had created jobs especially in the area of agriculture and reduced poverty. However, British Prime Minister, Theresa May, reiterated the statistics during her visit to Nigeria last year.