Peter Obi, the vice Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in the 2019 elections lied six consecutive times while his All Progressives Congress counterpart Yemi Osinbajo lied once during the 2019 Vice Presidential debate televised from Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.
In a FACTCHECK by TheCable and monitored by WikkiTimes, Mr Peter Obi, Atiku’s running mate started his lies when he claimed that there were two million vehicles in Nigeria.
But checked by TheCable which cited figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealed that Nigeria has a ‘total vehicle population of about 11,547,236 as at the third quarter of 2017’
WikkiTimes reports that the second lie made by Mr Obi during the debate which was fact checked by TheCable captured the PDP Vice Presidential candidate as saying ‘Nigeria has fallen on the global competitive index from 124 to 127.
TheCable, citing World Economic Forum in its 2018 statistics said ‘Nigeria rose on the index by 10 places’.
Obi’s third lie came when he said Nigeria’s foreign direct investment for 2015 was $21bn, while it fell to $12bn in 2017. TheCable said ‘according to NBS capital importation reports, Nigeria’s total imported capital stood at $9.6 billion in 2015, and $12.3 billion in 2017. Perhaps Obi meant 2014, when Nigeria’s total capital imported stood at $20.7 billion’.
The fourth lie uttered by Mr Obi during the debate quoted him as saying that African trade today was less than 9 percent, but facts indicated that Mr Obi has lied to Nigerians.
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TheCable, says ‘according to Afriexim Bank, Intra-Africa trade is around 15 percent. In 2016, intra-African exports made up 18 percent of total exports according to Brookings Institution’
The fifth lie by Mr Obi was when he said ‘oil give you 80% of foreign exchange earnings’ which was found to be untrue. As at 2017, ‘NBS figures showed that Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings from oil the oil sector stood above 90%.’
Obi’s sixth lie as monitored by WikkiTimes during the debate quoted him as saying that Apple Inc’s market cap is bigger than the economy of Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. But available facts unearth that ‘Apple’s market cap today is $788.57 billion. The economy of these three countries are bigger than Apple. When Apple was $1 trillion a few months ago, it was bigger in dollar terms.’
Mr Obi’s APC counterpart Yemi Osinbajo, lied once in a claimed referred by TheCable as ‘True and False’. Osinbajo says Nigeria went down by 64 places under PDP, but has risen by 24 places under APC.
In verifying the claim TheCable revealed that ‘Nigeria went down from 120 to 170 between 2008 and 2015, under PDP rule. Under the APC, ease of doing business has risen from 170 in 2015 to 146 in 2018, according to the World Bank Ease of Doing Business report.
Osinbajo however differed with his PDP counterpart by giving some true accounts of the situation of the country. For example he was factchecked right when he claimed that a bag of fertiliser now sells for N6,000 to N7,000.
TheCable said he was largely correct. ‘Price of fertiliser has experienced a drastic drop following the Nigeria-Morroco fertiliser deal. As at 2016, a bag of fertiliser sold above N10,000 (OS1 T)’
The two hopefuls however made some unverified claims. Claim by Mr Obi that the total loans from the banks in Nigeria is N19trn and only 0.5% goes to SMEs, remains unverified. Mr Obi’s suggestion that ‘to bring out goods from Apapa cost more than it takes to bring goods from Europe’ was still unverified. Osinbajo’s claim that there was a tax threshold for SMEs, SMEs get to a level before they pay taxes was yet to be verified.
TheCable says the essence of the fact check was ‘to keep politicians accountable at the vice-presidential and presidential debate’.
Peter Obi and Yemi Osinbajo debated alongside Ganiyu Galadima of ACPN, Khadijah Abdullahi of ANN and Umma Abdullahi-Getso of YPP.
