Figures received by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that the condition of living in Nigeria which is already harsh is set to worsen. In a report issued this week, NBS disclosed that inflation figures have climbed to a 17-year high of 20.52%. The figure rose from 19.64% in July 2022 to 20.52% in August 2022. The worst hit of inflation is food inflation that rose to 23.12% in August in the NBS report. With farmers increasingly finding it difficult to access their farms owing to banditry, kidnapping and general insecurity and the government unwilling and unable to tackle ravaging insecurity in the country, there is no doubt that living conditions in Nigeria will worsen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although it is a fact that countries around the world\nare grappling with the challenge of inflation, Nigeria\u2019s conditions appear\npeculiar. Agricultural productivity in the country has been worsened by\nnationwide deterioration of security. A lot of farming activities have\nsignificantly decreased or even halted as farmers fear for their lives and\navoid farming. This has consequences for poverty as most rural families can no\nlonger earn from farming. Large farming businesses are also impacted by this with\ncitizens spending more on food produce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The global challenge of inflation has seen even developed countries hiking interest rates by as much as 100 basis point. But in these countries, interest rates are at single digit numbers still. Nigeria\u2019s interest rate figures are in double digit and officially is 13%; yet, practically loans are mostly available at far more than the official rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is unclear how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)\nwill react to the recent NBS figures. Hikes in interest rates pose their own\nchallenges and, in an economy where the spiraling effect of this could have\nwider implications with interest rates already at a high, any further hike\ncould have serious unintended consequences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the recent past, the Nigerian government developed\nwhat it calls poverty alleviation schemes centred on cash handouts to indigent\ncitizens. President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s government announced in 2019, a plan to\nlift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in ten years. Since then, the Federal\nGovernment has launched several social welfare schemes through its Ministry of\nHumanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, ostensibly in\nan effort to fulfil citizens\u2019 socio-economic rights. In one example of\nhandouts, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs began a scheme called Grant for\nVulnerable Groups (GVG) in Bauchi State on Monday, 12th<\/sup> September\n2022, to provide grants of N20,000 each to 5,679 beneficiaries across the 20\nlocal government areas of the State. According to the Ministry, the GVG is\ntargeted at providing the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians in rural and\nperi-urban areas across the 36 States of the country and the Federal Capital\nTerritory (FCT) with one-off grants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, there are questions as to the effectiveness,\nas well as the transparency, accountability and sustainability of these social\nwelfare schemes. Indeed, countries across the world make provision for social\nwelfare and also introduce measures to deal with the impact of unforeseen\ncircumstances such as natural disasters, disease outbreak, etc. The COVID-19\npandemic is a prime example which had severe impact globally. Nigeria like many\nother countries introduced palliatives to cushion the effect of the pandemic on\nits citizens. However, this was not without controversy, from allegations that\nthe relief items were hoarded to outright questioning of the existence of some\nof the measures announced – how beneficiaries were determined, whom the\nbeneficiaries were and if they actually received the items and funds. These\nissues also trail other welfare programmes implemented by the Ministry of\nhumanitarian Affairs, such as the training and empowerment of youths in Bauchi\nin smartphone repair which cost N6.2 billion and a similar training in Kano\nwhich cost N5.9 billion; the National Home Grown School Feeding programme which\nin May 2022 was announced to cost almost N1 billion per month, to mention a\nfew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In June 2018, Nigeria overtook India as the poverty\ncapital of the world with about 86.9 million people living in extreme poverty\nand by December 2018, this number had increased to a staggering 90.8 million.\nObservers wonder if the funds spent on these welfare schemes have translated to\nany real empowerment for affected citizens. It is true that cash handouts can\naddress immediate needs of several persons living in abject poverty. However,\nin addition to the issues of transparency and sustainability, there is the\nquestion of impact \u2013 are handout schemes sufficient to actually address the\nhigh level of poverty in the country? The issues of security, electricity,\ninfrastructure and fiscal policies to support the growth and development of\nbusinesses remain unaddressed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Figures received by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that the condition of living in Nigeria which is already harsh is set to worsen. In a report issued this week, NBS disclosed that inflation figures have climbed to a 17-year high of 20.52%. The figure rose from 19.64% in July 2022 to 20.52% in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2899,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions\/2899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}