Why are over 70% of Nigerians poor?

Why asking when you know the answer to that question?
Please lets stop asking why?, and start saying how?.

How do we improve electricity?
How can we protect our votes in 2011?
How can we provide better health care?
How can prevent our youths from armed robbery, yahooze, thuggery & cultism?
How can we become better, patriotic & loyal citizens?
Lets start showing the way forward, instead of flogging a dead horse

how do you define "poor"?

Nigerians are very poor because we continue to do the same shi t every single day: cry and blame politicians for every dam n thing. We all forgot that politicians are made daily among all of us, therefore, we all need to look closely and directly in the mirror.
It takes you and I to make positive things happen in Nigeria.

because we like poverty

Poor means:
Fuc kup state of mind
Fuc kup standard of living and
Fuc kup future

poor is performing below expectation.living below standard.

Cos most of them are sycophants, hypocrites and cowards!

Nigerians are poor because their human and material resources are deliberately misappropriated
and misapplied. This grand scheme is executed by outright thievery, corruption in high
places ,executing  contracts where you do not have value for money and ineptitude by way
of poor quality work (material  and equipment input)and inefficient supervision.
The immediate effect , apart from not having value for money is that the services do not reach the people
and the people ar forced into acute and perpetual need.

This need translates into hunger, not necessarily for food but for essential services like roads, water, education,
electricity and of course jobs- which are basic ingredients for survival. Anybody caught in this web is thinking
of how t overcome them since he has to provide them for his family. In the process, your mind and effort
is in that direction while the mandarins continue to loot whatever remains of such scarce resource. It becomes
a vicious cycle, year in year out.

In this predicament, you are more worried on how to survive thatn what anyone else is doing. More pathetic is the fact that the
mandarins will not come to your assistance anyway. You ignore them, to your continuous detriment And you have no choice.
In the process, you have no say whether by vote or voice--- That is poverty and docility which is the ultimate aim of our oppressors.

Why are over 70% of Nigerians poor?

where do u get that figure from,and who said americans or any other ppl are rich?

in america the top 1% controls 90% of all the wealth of the nation so what about that?

nigerians are happy,let them live their lives

afterall u are not taking your million dollaRs to the next world are u?

also $1 can go much further in nigeria than it does here

There are so many poor of us because a huge majority have been too willing to accept the status quo and pacify ourselves with such statments as "Our leaders are doing their best", rather than stand to say enough is enough, go out there to fight for our rights. Majority are willing to continue feeding their minds with the same figures that we have been fed year after year, figures that rarely translate into actual advancement with the people. In the last decade, the country's economy has been recorded as growing year after year, yet in the same period, the number of VERY poor has risen exponentially and the gap between the very rich and the very poor has significantly increased.

For those who will come in to tell me how fighting for one's rights means getting violent, I say please do not even bother coming at me with that silly MENTALITY as I am not to entertain idiots today.

@paddy_lo

What is the per capita income of US and Nigeria?
Do you have middle class in Nigeria?

@paddy_lo

nigerians are happy,let them live their lives

Your profile says that you are in Philadelphia. Why are you there?
Come back and live in your country.You need to come to Lagos and realize that everyone wakes up enraged before hitting the streets!

[
^^^^^^^^^^^

Quote from Paddy lo

b]also $1 can go much further in nigeria than it does here

Abeg paddy lo, no makee me laugh.

Na which poor man see dollar make e take am long way?

Correct sliced bread na N150, Agege bread na 40/go naira,
U sure say you dey naija?[/b]

Chapelle.S:

Why are over 70% of Nigerians poor?

How did you do your research?

70% of Nigerians are poor because we have oil. Foreigners drill it and middlemen pocket the dosh. . . Poor person no dey dat equation.

@kosovo

Travel to Lagos,Kaduna,Port harcourt.

Stand at the bustop and take a survey.2/3 of all those 18 million people living in lagos live in slums.Do you need more?

You may even arrive at more than 70%.This figure is official.Imagine official unemployment rate of Nigeria to be 5.something officially?

Why Lagos, Kaduna, PortHarcourt, Abuja?

Seriously, those aren't the only areas in that country. What about many of the thousands of out of the way places in the same country? You talk about development and we are back again talking of Lagos, Portharcourt and Abuja as if those are the measures of development for the whole nation. Ain't it time we visited the rest of Nigeria to figure out where these numbers actually come from, and why all that glitters in parts of Lagos, portharcourt, abuja is NOT GOLD.

Random sampling

If we talk about the small towns and villages,there will be problem

But that is where most of the poor live. They are unable to afford the sky high cost of living in the four cities most people think makes up the picture of nigeria as a whole. We are speaking of a population of over 140 million poeple here.

Nigeria is poor, not because of bad leadership, the West, or corruption.
Nigerians are poor because Africans are mentally and psychologically poor.
The mental and psychological poverty is bound to produce bad leadership and corruption. No doubt.

Somehow, after all these years, with all the information at peoples' disposal, we are unable to transit from being consumers to producers. Everybody in Nigeria is dependent on someone or something. Call it government, foreign multinationals, etc. Wealth is not created in Nigeria by Nigerians, and at the end of the day, people are desperate and unbelievably selfish, and to add to the problem, we seem to have evolved a Western appetite for life. How that happened is surprising.

We talk a lot about how much resources we have, and why we should not be poor. How about countries like Germany or Japan, with almost no natural resources? Ever wondered why Saudi is rich? Because of the USA, wo created the dollar, and the power behind it. Take away the demand for oil, and let's see how Saudi or the UAE will fare. They cannot even consume the oil themselves, as little or no manufacturing goes on. Apart from Britain and Norway, I don't know of any country that has actually used oil to better the lot of the average man on the street. Only those two countries have a working social system, a self-sustaining economy, and an empowered population.

I have read, and even contributed to a thread in the Education section about the best business schools in the world. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I am ashamed of myself for even thinking in that direction. Nigerians, plunking down $100k plus for a chance to attend Harvard or Yale, so they can get a shot at Goldman Sachs? Haba. Not that the idea in itself is bad, but. . . it shows that Nigerians have extended their massive consumer appetite to Ivy League Educations as well. Look at the way British universities are shamelessly roadshowing across Nigeria, as our own systems crumble by the day. Totally pathetic.

Ever wondered why China is rich? Because it produces wealth by generating manufacturing capacity for the whole world,, and consumes very little.

Delete the West from your submission! If you suggest that,you are insinuating that we are inferior.

I dont really think 70% of nigerians are poor.Nigerians can survive any situation.The only thing is the wide gap between the rich and the poor.So even middle class men and civil servants are also tagged poor which is incorrect,atleast most poor people are comfortable.

bad thinking; bad product; Good thinking Good Product

@bluetooth

In your comfortable country of over 150million population only about 10million are connected to the internet whats the percentage? less than 5%.Bluetooth,do you live in Mars.So you don't know that those who are eating the whole money are less than 1 percent of the population?

poor is foolishness

@chapelle s
First i'm really interested in knowing the parameter in measuring poverty, If it's that one of most nigerians earning less than $1 per day,then i certainly disagree.The west are experts in proganda and subversion.All these are campaign against black.Ask me,which africa country has reached the threshold of developed country even china and indian are still called devoping countries but on a comparative level,these two countries countries bypass nigeria,so why are they still classified as "developing".The west wants to subdue other countries by all means and they are winning thanks to thread like this!

@chapelle s
First i'm really interested in knowing the parameter in measuring poverty, If it's that one of most nigerians earning less than $1 per day,then i certainly disagree.The west are experts in proganda and subversion.All these are campaign against black.Ask me,which africa country has reached the threshold of developed country even china and indian are still called devoping countries but on a comparative level,these two countries countries bypass nigeria,so why are they still classified as "developing".The west wants to subdue other countries by all means and they are winning thanks to thread like this!

One of the major determinants of poverty is purchasing power. How many nigerians can afford brand new products if not the cheap junks china floods here. We are poor.accept it.In a population of 150million,say 10million are doing well is that progress.is it not stagnation.You want to know the parameter.There was a recent job test where 4000 where required,45,000 unemployed graduates wrote the exam whereas over 50,000 missed it.are these youths who are unemployed not poor.the thousands of criminals and militants we have today would not have existed.Do you live in Lagos take time and tour the nook and crannies of Lagos state.Plz if we will reject western figures,provide authentic ones from within not in the manner of INEC

if the 1 dollar per day UN benchmark were to be used.i think nigerians are not poor.maybe just 2 percent or slightly more live on less than N150 a day.

I think that most people who are on nairaland maybe students who live on transfered payments and the few who can afford a laptop and internet connection.You need to live in the wider society and interact with hawkers,labourers and the unemployed so that you realize that Nigeria is a poor country.this is not western propaganda.it is real.

Abagworo:

if the 1 dollar per day UN benchmark were to be used.i think nigerians are not poor.maybe just 2 percent or slightly more live on less than N150 a day.

^^^^Go to the north,inner villages in the south.

Let us stop burying our heads in the sand!