With a misery index of 23.2% based on the latest inflation figure of 12.8% from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigerians are now the 5th most miserable people on earth, according to a global projection of misery index compiled by Bloomberg.
A misery index measures how well the people living in a particular country are doing economically. It is measured by adding the unemployment rate in a country to the inflation rate. The unemployment rate measures the number of people out of job as a percentage of the population while the inflation rate measures the rise in prices of goods and services in a country.
If more people are out of job while prices of goods and services are rising at the same time, then more people will be getting poorer and unable to meet their basic needs, causing them misery, hence the misery index.
Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on 12 April released the inflation figures for March 2016 showing that inflation has hit a new 4-year high of 12.8%, higher than the 11.4% recorded in February. The higher inflation figure was because of the increase in the prices of food stuff in the market.
Food prices, which make up the biggest proportion of the basket of goods and services used to measure the inflation index, rose by 1.4 percent points to 12.7 percent in March, the bureau said on its website.
“The higher price level was reflected in faster increases across all divisions.”
With Nigeria’s unemployment rate at 10.4% as at last quarter of 2015, the current misery index in the country now stands at 23.2 percent, making it the fifth most miserable country in the world right now. This is bad news for the ruling All Progressive Congress as rising misery index has been linked to drop in the popularity or acceptance of the ruling government.
Analysts are projecting that the misery index is likely to get worse since the intense fuel scarcity and power crisis that has crippled economic activities in the first and second quarter of 2016 could lead to a spike in unemployment rate worsening Nigeria’s misery index.
Hopes that the 2016 budget will be passed early to spur growth have also been dashed by the endless controversy surrounding the budget. This means economic activities are not likely to pick up until well into the second half of the year, which may be too late to reverse some of the damage already done.
The IMF recently revised downwards Nigeria’s economic growth rate for 2016 to just 2.3%, which is far below the minimum of 7% annual growth rate required to put a dent on poverty.
