THE Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) declared in Lagos on Thursday that 27.4 million Nigerians earn below N100, 000 per annum. It said the figure represented 48.9 percent of persons living in poverty in the country, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.
It made the declarations at the launch of a report entitled “The Ignored Pandemic: How Corruption in the Health, Education and Water Sectors is Plunging Nigerians into Poverty”. Presenting the report, Dr Elijah Okebukola, Senior Research Fellow at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, an arm of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) said the report’s survey covered the six geopolitical zones of the country.
The report states that 27.9 percent of Nigerians living in poverty (more than 15.6 million) earn between N100, 000 and N200, 000 per annum. It states that 10.7 per cent earn between N201, 000 and N300, 000 per annum while 12.5 per cent earn more than N300, 000 per annum. “Poor people are victims and not perpetrators of corruption in the health, education and water sectors.
“States did not have documented policies for helping people living in poverty or people earning low income to have access to healthcare, education and water.
“Even if these policies existed, they were not known to public officers who serve the people living in poor neighbourhoods,” Okebukola said.
According to the SERAP report, 79 percent of people living in poverty (more than 44.3 million Nigerians) relied on personal wells or boreholes for water supply.
The report showed that 34 per cent of people living in poverty, about 19 million Nigerians, did not use the government’s medical facilities at all.
The report added that 5.2 per cent of people living in poverty (more than 2.9 million Nigerians) who went to government medical facilities were denied medical treatment in the last one year.