Senate President Godswill Akpabio has told Nigerians that poverty is not a crime.
He made the comment in Rome after attending the funeral of Pope Francis last Saturday at the Vatican. Akpabio led a five-member federal government delegation to the event.
Speaking in an interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) via Zoom, Akpabio said:
When you look at the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church is not just a church. The Vatican is also regarded as a state. So you have the head of state that died and was buried today. You also have the country that headed this flock all over the world, well over 1.5 billion in number.
“And you have a man who died as a man today, the Pope, who was worth only $100, showing that yes, we cannot worship God in splendour and that the best way to worship God is to worship God through self-sacrifice for others.
“So the message is very clear that Nigerians should love one another and that poverty is not a crime and that poverty could sometimes be a virtue, a virtue of God and that whatever you have you should be able to share with your brothers and sisters and above all in this period of Easter.”
Pope Francis passed away last Monday.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has said poverty in Nigeria will increase by 3.6 percentage points over the next five years through 2027.
The bank made the disclosure in its Africa’s Pulse report released at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington DC, United States.
The report said non-resource-rich countries are expected to continue reducing poverty faster than resource-rich countries, adding that due to higher prices of agricultural commodities, non-resource-rich countries will see higher growth overall, despite fiscal pressures.
“Conversely, resource-rich countries are not expected to grow at the same rate given decelerating oil prices. As a result, resource-rich countries are expected to see less progress in terms of poverty reduction (figure 1.10).
“Importantly, poverty in resource-rich, fragile countries (which include large countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria) is expected to increase by 3.6 percentage points over 2022–27, being the only group in the region with increasing poverty rates.”
In separate note contained in the report, the World Bank cautioned that its finding calls for “urgent improvement in service delivery in countries with rapidly expanding populations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.”
The report said the development follows a well-established pattern, whereby resource wealth combined with fragility or conflict is associated with the highest poverty rates—an average poverty rate of 46 per cent in 2024, 13 percentage points above non-fragile, resource-rich countries. Meanwhile, non-resource-rich, non-fragile countries saw the biggest gains in poverty reduction since 2000 and fully closed the gap in poverty with other non-resource-rich countries by 2010.