Nigeria’s Ambassador-designate to Mexico, Reno Omokri, has said the average Nigerian can survive on N3,000 daily, arguing that poverty metrics should be interpreted within local economic contexts.
Speaking on Sunday Politics, Omokri addressed the rising cost of living and international poverty benchmarks. He said he personally conducted market surveys with a journalist to verify current prices of basic food items, including yam, rice, maize and fruits.
“I went there with one journalist, no security, and I stopped along the way, and I priced goods. I priced yam, I priced rice, I priced maize, I priced fruits. In Nigeria, people can live on that amount in a day,” Omokri said.
He contrasted domestic purchasing power with international cost-of-living metrics, noting that equivalent sums would represent extreme poverty in countries such as the United States.
“In the United States, if you try to live on that amount in a day, it is poverty. So, you have to context, again, context matters,” he added.
Omokri also challenged global poverty indicators established by multilateral financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which use international poverty benchmarks.
He argued that uniform global benchmarks do not fully account for differences in local market conditions across developing countries.
