In a barely audible 13-second video circulating on Facebook, Peter Obi appears to say he has pulled 439 million Nigerians out of poverty. Obi is the Labour Party candidate in Nigeria's February 2023 presidential election.
We've found about a dozen Facebook posts of the video, which shows Obi addressing a gathering. All the captions accuse Obi of lying, or of quoting inaccurate statistics. Some are presented as fact-checks.
Nigeria's entire population is estimated at about 200 million people.
One version claims Obi said he pulled 439 million people out of poverty in the southeastern state of Anambra - where he was governor from 2007 to 2014 - alone. Nigeria has 36 states.
"This is one of d lies and fake figures he used to gather his Obingos and Obidiots," the post reads. "Obingos" and "Obidiots" are insults for Obi's supporters, who call themselves "Obidients".
Other versions of the claim can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Obi's critics, including All Progressives Congress presidential candidate Bola Tinubu, have previously accused him of dishing out inaccurate statistics.
Elections for the presidency and other top positions in Nigeria's federal and state governments are set to kick off on 25 February.
But did Obi claim he lifted 439 million Nigerians out of poverty, and does the video show him making the claim?
Original video cut mid-sentence
The 13-second video was cut out of video of Obi's speech during a more than one-hour interactive session with northern Nigerian leaders. It was organised by the Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna, northwest Nigeria, in October 2022.
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The video was cut to begin mid-sentence: "... and was able to pull 439 million people out of poverty. It was MDGs that India mainstreamed into their development agenda and pulled 269 million people out of poverty."
A video of the full event shows that Obi was talking about how the Asian countries of China, India and Vietnam had lifted millions from poverty through Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) programmes.
China and India are - by far - the world's most populous countries.
In 2021, China had an estimated population of 1.412 billion people, while India's population was estimated at 1.408 billion. Vietnam had about 97.5 million people.
This is the sentence that was cut halfway in the 13-second video: "It was MDG that China mainstreamed into their development agenda and was able to pull 439 million people out of poverty." The audio is of poor quality, so the "and" could be misheard as "I".
Obi not did not say he pulled 439 million people out of poverty. He said China did.
