\u201cI eat anything I see,\u201d says Abdul Edosa, 30, as he sits under the bridge in the sprawling Nigerian commercial metropolis of Lagos, where he sleeps. \u201cI beg money from people — anything they give me, I eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edosa\u2019s is a familiar voice in the country with the world\u2019s largest number of extremely poor, which the United Nations defines as living on less than $1.90 a day. The estimated figure now is 87 million people, or almost half the population of Africa\u2019s biggest oil producer, and unless something dramatic happens, it\u2019s going to get much bigger.<\/p>\n
While poverty in India, which has five times the population, is declining, the number of destitute in Nigeria is believed to be growing by six people every minute, according to a recent paper from The Brookings Institution. The UN expects its population to double to 410 million by 2050, potentially swelling the ranks of the poor.<\/p>\n
Edosa usually passes his nights with a handful of men and women on makeshift wooden beds under the bridge in Ikeja, the capital of Lagos state. Police trying to chase them away are a constant menace. A high-school dropout who did a stint as a television-repair apprentice, he now heads off each morning to look for odd jobs at building sites or hits the streets to beg.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Nigeria, six people fall into extreme poverty every minute https:\/\/t.co\/wxX6ft5rEK<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Bloomberg Africa (@BBGAfrica) February 22, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n