* Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonlo-Iweala rubbishes World Basnk's rating of Nigeria as extreme poor country
According to Okonjo-Iweala, the rating was based on the large number of poor people living in the country.
She made the clarification when she interacted with newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.
It could be recalled that the World Bank President, Dr Jim Kim, on Wednesday in Washington, announced that Nigeria was among the world's extremely poor countries.
Other countries that were also rated as Nigeria were India, China, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Kim had said "the fact is that two-thirds of the world's extreme poor are concentrated in just five countries: India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"If you add another five countries, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya, the total grows to 80 per cent of the extreme poor," he said
In an attempt to rubbish the report, Okonjo-Iweala explained that the number of poor people in a country irrespective of the country's level of development was the parameter used to rate Nigeria among nations with high poverty level.
The finance minister advised that the focus of Nigerians now should be on the answers to the problem raised by the World Bank and what other countries were doing that Nigeria could learn from so as to improve.
"Nobody says that everything is fine but we are learning and where we make some progress like other countries, we should also acknowledge it,'' she stressed.
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