Nigeria’s poverty crisis is often discussed in terms of income, exchange rates, or daily earnings, but a deeper and more troubling reality lies beneath the numbers. Beyond financial deprivation, millions of Nigerians are poor because they lack access to basic services (education, healthcare, clean water and sanitation) that define a minimum standard of living.
This broader condition, known as multidimensional poverty, captures the lived experience of Nigerians who may earn above minimum wage yet remain deprived due to systemic failures in service delivery. Official survey data show that while about 69.5 million Nigerians are financially poor, as many as 133 million Nigerians are multidimensionally poor, reflecting widespread gaps in access to essential social infrastructure across the country.
In a federal system like Nigeria’s, multidimensional poverty raises fundamental questions about governance responsibilities, fiscal priorities and service delivery at the sub-national level. Responsibility for basic education, primary healthcare, water supply and sanitation—key indicators of multidimensional poverty—lies largely with state and local governments under the Constitution. Yet persistent deficiencies in these areas continue to undermine human development across much of the country.
Within this broader debate, former Minister of Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, speaking in July 2025, questioned the tendency to attribute Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty almost exclusively to the Federal Government, describing it as a misunderstanding of both data and constitutional roles.
Speaking at the Honorary National Steering Committee meeting and dinner with the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Support Unit, Agba said multidimensional poverty is fundamentally a crisis of access, not merely income. He explained that the indicators used to measure it—basic education, primary healthcare, potable water and sanitation—fall largely within the constitutional responsibilities of state and local governments.
According to him, conflating income poverty with multidimensional poverty has distorted public accountability and weakened governance outcomes. “Multidimensional poverty is about lack of access,” he said, stressing that access failures cannot be addressed through federal fiscal policy alone.
Agba criticised what he described as the long-standing pattern of development centralisation at the state level, where resources are disproportionately concentrated in state capitals while rural communities and local governments remain underserved. He noted that although governors campaign across their entire states, public spending after elections often neglects grassroots communities where deprivation is most acute.
He also faulted sub-national governments for prioritising tertiary healthcare facilities over primary healthcare centres, arguing that such choices undermine early intervention, emergency care and preventive health services for millions of Nigerians living outside urban centres.
To illustrate the concept, Agba said a person could be financially comfortable yet remain multidimensionally poor if basic services are unavailable. A community without a functioning healthcare facility at night or schools within reasonable distance, he argued, represents a clear case of multidimensional deprivation regardless of income levels.
While acknowledging widespread economic hardship, Agba rejected claims that recent poverty figures should be used as a singular measure of the performance of successive federal administrations. He maintained that such assessments ignore Nigeria’s federal structure and the constitutional division of responsibilities.
He also defended ongoing structural reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies, describing them as difficult but necessary decisions outlined in Nigeria’s long-term and medium-term national development plans. According to him, short-term pain was inevitable but unavoidable if the country was to address deeper structural weaknesses, including Nigeria’s persistently low revenue-to-GDP ratio.
