Former presidential aide and ambassador-designate to Mexico, Reno Omokri, has said an average Nigerian can survive on about N3,000 a day, arguing that the cost of living in Nigeria differs significantly from that of the United States.
Omokri made the remark on Sunday while appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he discussed poverty benchmarks and the rising cost of living.
According to him, he recently travelled through Nigeria with a journalist and, without security personnel, stopped at various locations to check the prices of essential 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,” he said.
Omokri contrasted the situation with the United States, saying that attempting to live on the equivalent of N3,000 per day in the country would amount to poverty.
“But 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.
He also questioned the application of international poverty benchmarks to Nigeria, distinguishing between the World Bank’s global poverty threshold and the realities of living costs in the country.
Asked whether he disagreed with the World Bank’s poverty benchmark, Omokri said the institution was applying a global standard.
“The World Bank is using a global benchmark. And they’ve always used it?” he said.