Today, Nigeria should be one of the richest countries in the world with vast oil reserves and a plentiful workforce, yet over 65% of the country's population live under the poverty line and half of those live in abject poverty. Part of this is because of rampant corruption in urban areas, leaving few funds to trickle down to the masses, 90% of whom rely on subsistence farming with almost half striving to make a living on smallholdings barely one hectare in size.

This is the root cause of poverty in Nigeria for the masses, as the oil revenues largely bypass those living and working outside that industry. The failure of agriculture in Nigeria is often blamed on the federal system, with the central government planning ignored or by passed by regional governments. What is clear, however, that as the agriculture industry has declined decade after decade, the ability to provide food for the family and sell on the excess has diminished year by year, fuelling poverty in Nigeria and of course, malnutrition.

Malnutrition affects just under a third of all Nigerian children, one in five of whom die before their fifth birthday, HIV/AIDS affects three out of every hundred citizens and there are nearly ten million orphans in the country out of a total population of some 158 million ~ making it the eighth most populous nation in the world. Life expectancy is around 47years.

Unfortunately what land there is for farming is suffering from deforestation and soil erosion in the north due to poor farming methods and in the Niger Delta Region, land is becoming increasingly polluted by oil spills and also suffers from regular, heavy flooding. This video explores poverty in Nigeria, together with a review of its consequences for the federal republic and its people.