Poverty and Hunger in the Nigerian Economy: An Impact Assessment

Poverty level in Nigeria has remained high despite various past initiatives by Government and the International Community to alleviate it. This may be due to several reasons among which are the inability to properly diagnose the fundamental causes and empirically measure it in such a way that lends itself to analytical deductions for policy formulation and initiation. Several indicators have been evolved to measure poverty, among which are the poverty line by the World Bank, the Human Development Index, as introduced by the United Nations, the human Poverty Index and a host of others, for example the level of food energy consumed by a country, and the level of food security and state of infrastructure. While most of these measures are indicative of the state of poverty, they do not constitute a true measure of poverty. They are either static or not directly correlated to in situ or absolute poverty whose measurement has remained elusive. Besides Poverty and Hunger have been used interchangeably in the literature. This study revisits, reviews and re-evaluates poverty with a view to determine a more robust definition of poverty and to empirically estimate poverty and hunger, that are amenable to rigorous policy analysis on the one hand and to determine the requirements for minimizing them in Nigeria with a view to optimally grow and develop the economy on the other hand. Poverty was estimated as the Demand Pressure for Commodities, while Hunger was estimated as the Demand Pressure for Food. This study used the total differential systems modeling approach (ecostatometrics), Linear Goal Programming and Markov Chains Analysis to assess the impact of poverty and hunger on the Nigerian economy and the requirements for minimizing them for optimum growth and development. It was revealed that not until investments are converted into physical infrastructure including factories and industries, would the problems of poverty, hunger, including unemployment and inflation be overcome and the economy will be truly diversified and will grow and develop in real terms.