According to World
Bank’s report, Nigeria will take over India as the world capital for
deaths of children under the age of five by 2021.
The
bank’s report was based on the fact that India, with a population of
1.3 billion recorded 989,000 under-five deaths in 2017, while Nigeria,
with 196 million citizens, recorded 714,000 deaths in the same year.
In
its bi-annual economic update on Nigeria, the World bank said Nigeria
records the highest number of child malaria deaths anywhere in the
world, adding that Nigeria had the highest number of out-of-school
children anywhere in the world, and that 90 percent of these children
are from northern Nigeria.
The bank said:
“Nigeria’s weak revenue mobilization has major implications for its
growth and development, including for improving its dire social service
delivery outcomes. “Poverty remains high in Nigeria and access to basic
social services is not universal.
In 2016, the World Bank estimated poverty at 38.8 percent of the population using the national poverty line.
By
international poverty line of PPP-corrected $1.90 per capita per day,
an estimated 49.2 percent of the population lived below poverty in 2017.
Vanguard