United Nations has reported that approximately 113 million Nigerians, representing 48.7% of the country’s population, experience multidimensional poverty, facing overlapping deprivations in health, education, and living standards.
The finding is contained in the 2026 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) update published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
According to the report, the average poor Nigerian is deprived in 55% of the weighted indicators used to measure health, education, and living standards, while 28.7% of the population is classified as severely poor.
The figures highlight the scale of hardship in Africa’s most populous country, where access to basic services remains uneven, and millions of households struggle to meet essential needs.
The report also points to a reversal of earlier progress, raising questions about the durability of poverty-reduction efforts and the ability of existing policies to keep pace with the country’s changing demographic and economic conditions.
“Like for like, the share poor fell from 42.3% in 2013 to 33.0% in 2021, then rose to 38.7% in 2024. That is nearly 18 million more poor people: three-quarters from a higher rate, one quarter from population growth.”
UN Report
The comparable trend provides a separate measure from the report’s headline estimate of 113 million Nigerians living in multidimensional poverty.
Rural Communities and Northern Nigeria Face Greater Deprivation
The report identifies a pronounced geographical divide in Nigeria’s poverty burden, with rural residents experiencing substantially higher levels of deprivation than people living in towns and cities.
About 68.9% of rural Nigerians are multidimensionally poor, compared with 24.8% of the urban population. Severe poverty is also considerably more prevalent in rural communities, affecting 45.1% of residents, against 9.3% in urban areas.
The figures show that poverty in Nigeria is not distributed evenly across the country. Rural communities face a heavier concentration of disadvantages.
The report also identifies northern Nigeria as the region with the highest poverty rates, reinforcing concerns about persistent regional inequalities.
The concentration of deprivation in rural areas and the North means that national poverty-reduction strategies may have limited impact if they fail to address the particular challenges faced by communities in those locations.
Improvements in income alone may not eliminate deprivation where communities continue to lack electricity, adequate sanitation, healthcare, schooling and other essential services.
The findings therefore point to the importance of policies that address interconnected disadvantages rather than treating each indicator as an isolated problem. Expanding access to services, improving infrastructure and directing support towards the communities facing the greatest deprivation are among the issues highlighted by the report’s breakdown of poverty.
UN Flags Energy Access Gaps in Nigeria’s Poverty Crisis
According to the UN report, access to clean cooking fuel and electricity emerged as two of the largest gaps contributing to multidimensional poverty in Nigeria.
According to the report, 47.4% of Nigerians are poor and deprived of clean cooking fuel, while 37.6% are poor and lack electricity.
UN noted that these are areas where policy interventions could make a measurable difference, stating: “These are gaps that policy knows how to close.”
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s experience forms part of a wider global challenge identified in the 2026 update. The report estimates that 1.2 billion people across 108 developing countries live in multidimensional poverty, marking the first increase in the global total since the index was introduced in 2010.
The latest figure represents 51.5 million more people than in the 2025 update. Children account for more than half of those affected, with 617 million living in multidimensional poverty, while 83 per cent of the total population experiencing deprivation live in rural areas.
UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo described the increase as a wake-up call for the international community.
“Behind these figures are 1.2 billion people facing hardships that reinforce one another: hunger, missed schooling and a lack of clean water or electricity. This is unacceptable.”
Alexander De Croo
The report cautions that population growth accounts for part of the increase. In 95 countries where new survey data were unavailable, revised population estimates added nearly 16 million people to the number counted as poor. New survey information was available for only 13 of the 108 countries covered, limiting the extent to which the latest figures capture recent changes across the entire index.
Thirty-three countries have halved their multidimensional poverty levels in fewer than 15 years, including six in sub-Saharan Africa. Eswatini, for instance, reduced the proportion of its population living in multidimensional poverty from nearly 39% to 8%.
The report argues that reducing poverty remains achievable, but the figures from Nigeria illustrate how progress can be reversed when improvements in living conditions fail to keep pace with population growth and persistent deprivation.
With the Sustainable Development Goals calling for the proportion of people living in poverty to be reduced by at least half before the end of the decade, the latest findings renew attention to the need for coordinated action across health, education, energy and other essential services.
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