Nigeria will overtake India in 2021 as the country with the most under-five deaths in the world. this is according to the latest bi-annual economic report of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods Institution.
The report predicts that just like Nigeria overtook India as the world’s poverty capital in 2019, the country will overtake India as the nation with the highest number of infant mortality under the age of five by 2021.
One reason for this estimate is the fact that the highest number of children who die from malaria in the world can be found in Nigeria.
Another reason is that Nigeria recorded 714,000 under-five deaths in 2017, according to the current World Bank figures, while India recorded 989,000 deaths in the same year.
It continued: “Poverty remains high in Nigeria and access to basic social services is not universal.
The report also stated that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-primary school-aged children in the world, nine million children to be exact. 90 per cent of these children are said to come from Northern Nigeria.
This new report comes after Nigeria recently overtook India as the poverty capital of the world
