The song Sudden by the great Augustine Miles Kelechi, popularly known as Tekno. Tekno is a Nigerian singer, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer.
The song is talking about how suddenly Nigeria’s poverty situation has gotten worse, as if things were not really bad already. Now in the latest Living Standards Survey published by the National Bureau of Statistics, the poverty rate is said to be 40.1 percent. This means that if we assume a population of 206 million, 84 million people would be in poverty. The Nigerian government uses a poverty threshold of N137,430 per person. This amounts to about N377 per person per day, the equivalent of about of $2.56 per person, per day using purchasing power parity (PPP) measures. Even so the World Bank’s poverty line for lower middle income countries like Nigeria is $3.20 at PPP. Therefore if we used the World Bank poverty line the poverty rate would be much higher. Now the Corona Virus has come to make matters worse. The truth is that poverty rates in Nigeria and all the world have suddenly worsened and poverty stress on not so poor people has spiked. And with conditions of scarce electricity, security and jobs, a Corona virus effect becomes more pronounced. According to World Bank Blogs, the Corona virus pandemic may cause Nigeria to add an additional 5 million people to its poverty ranks. But this is not all. The real hidden economics is that states such as Sokoto, Taraba and Jigawa which already have very high poverty rates near 90 percent will all of a sudden experience even wider poverty gaps from already terrible marks near or over 40 percent, compared to Lagos and Delta with gaps below 1%. Fortunately we can find a solution. Our hidden economics for you.