Verifying claims by Bola Tinubu's media team amid #EndBadGoverance protests in Nigeria
- Tinubu's team is correct that the minimum wage has been raised from N30,000 to N70,000 a month under his watch and that the current dispensation has cleared US$7 billion of foreign exchange backlog.
- The media centre's claims about current foreign reserves and oil production are also mostly on the money, though they understated what these were when Tinubu took office, thus overinflating the government's gains here.
- Their claims about the size of the country's ways and means debt are either incorrect or cannot be proven.
The Nigerian government, led by president Bola Tinubu, has taken several steps to stop the planned ten-day nationwide protests scheduled for 1 to 10 August 2024 and tagged #EndBadGovernance online.
These steps included establishing points across the country where Nigerians could buy a 50 kilogram bag of rice at half price, meeting key leaders and signing the new minimum wage bill into law.
On social media, Tinubu's media team released an infographic showing how some economic indicators have improved since Tinubu became president in May 2023.
"Like Mr. President said the bleeding of the economy has been fixed. We have turned a corner, and this is time for harvest! #BelieveInPBAT," an aide posted on X on 31 July 2024, the day before the protests were scheduled to begin.
PBAT stands for "President Bola Ahmed Tinubu".
The post, which has been viewed more than 1.2 million times and reposted more than 1,500 times, includes an infographic which claims progress on increasing foreign reserves, the minimum wage and oil production, among other things.
On 4 August, in a national address, Tinubu called on the protesters to shelve the remaining planned protests, dubbed "10 Days of Rage", while listing some of the steps his government was taking to ease the rising cost of living that had led to the protests.
But are the claims in the infographic shared by the president's team accurate? We checked.
Foreign exchange reserves are assets held by a central bank in foreign currencies. They play a key role in maintaining a country's currency value and economic stability.
Tinubu took office on 29 May 2023. Nigeria's foreign reserves that month ranged from $35.1 billion to $35.3 billion.
So Tinubu inherited about $35 billion in foreign reserves, not $34 billion.
Understating the starting figure implies a greater improvement than what was actually achieved.
Since June 2023, Nigeria's foreign exchange reserves have fluctuated significantly, reaching a low of $32.1 billion in April 2024.
According to the latest central bank data, they rose to $36.8 billion on 31 July 2024, the highest under Tinubu's regime. This is $200 million short of the $37 billion claimed in the infographic.
The minimum wage in Nigeria was N30,000 ($18.75) per month until 29 July, when Tinubu signed a new minimum wage bill into law.
The new wage was agreed on 18 July by the federal government, unions and the private sector after months of negotiations. It stipulates that workers in Nigeria should be paid a minimum of N70,000 ($43.75) per month, to be reviewed after three years.
However, there are some concerns that not all states in the country will pay the higher wage, and that the increase may not improve the purchasing power of households.
Raising minimum wage could lead to increased inflation
Recent government fiscal measures, such as the new minimum wage, transfer payments to the poor, student loans and security spending, are inflationary, Christopher Ekong, professor of economics at the University of Uyo in southern Nigeria, told Africa Check.
"Total money in circulation is rapidly increasing. The new minimum wage will increase the nominal value of income earned by the worker, but the real value of the new wage may return the worker to a worse position ... due to the worsening rising inflationary trend," he told Africa Check.
Ekong said that the government should consider a "Marshall Plan" and provide land to deepen food production. Officially known as the European Recovery Programme, the Marshall Plan was a US initiative launched in 1948 to provide economic help to Western European countries to rebuild their economies after the devastation of the second world war.
"If this is intentionally and massively implemented, food prices will crash, general inflationary trends will start rallying downwards and the purchasing value of our money will appreciate."
The ways and means provision allows the federal government to borrow from the central bank when it needs short-term or emergency funds.
Available data shows that in May 2023 N22.7 trillion of ways and means debt was securitised and converted into long-term public debt managed by the Debt Management Office.
Securitisation is the process of converting short-term debt into tradable securities - that is, selling them to investors as bonds or other financial instruments.
Days before the end of Muhammadu Buhari's term as president, the Nigerian senate approved his request to restructure N22.7 trillion ways and means loans from the central bank. In February 2024, finance minister Wale Edun said the Tinubu administration would audit this debt.
We found no official information on how much was left on the central bank's books as ways and means debt after the N22.7 trillion was converted into public debt.
Some media reports say that when Tinubu took over, ways and means debt was N26.95 trillion, including the converted N22.7 trillion.
However, a statement from the finance ministry dated 28 May and attributed to Edun said that the Tinubu administration inherited ways and means debt of N7.3 trillion.
Based on the publicly available data, we rate the claim that Tinubu inherited a debt of N27 trillion as incorrect.
The finance ministry statement announced that the Tinubu administration had repaid N4.8 trillion of the N7.3 trillion ways and means debt it inherited.
It also noted that the administration would pay an additional N2.5 trillion in the second quarter of 2024 as it sought to improve fiscal discipline.
In an interview in June 2024, Edun said the federal government had settled N7.3 trillion in ways and means advances from the central bank.
Edun did not say how much was left and we have found no official data on the current ways and means debt or any further payments. For example, the CBN's most recent monthly and quarterly reports do not mention it either.
Mohammed Manga, the finance ministry's spokesperson, told Africa Check that the minister had last mentioned the status of the debt during a press conference on 26 July.
Media reports from the briefing quote Edun as saying the federal government had repaid the debt: "We exited ways and means by paying N7.3 trillion obligations."
Manga promised to send us a recent press release on the actual status of the government's debt. We will update the report when he does. We have also contacted the central bank and will update this report when we hear back.
But without a smoking gun, we rate the claim as unproven.
Tinubu's media team was right to claim that the Central Bank of Nigeria, headed by Tinubu appointee Yemi Cardoso, had cleared a $7 billion foreign exchange backlog.
The foreign exchange backlog refers to unmet demand for foreign currency, particularly US dollars, placed with the central bank, usually through commercial banks. It includes dollar requests from importers, manufacturers buying inputs from abroad, people paying tuition to schools or medical bills to hospitals abroad, and travellers.
The backlog was caused by the central bank stalling these requests due to a shortage of dollars. This affected the operations of some foreign companies, such as airlines.
In March, the bank announced that it had settled $7 billion in outstanding obligations to commercial banking customers.
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The central bank said it cleared the backlog to help stabilise the exchange rate, curb imported inflation and boost confidence in Nigeria's banking system.
There have been media reports that the naira had subsequently strengthened.
In May 2023, Nigeria produced an average of 1.19 million barrels of crude oil per day.
This is according to data published by Nigeria's Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, or NUPRC, which enforces oil and gas exploration and production laws.
When the condensates produced along with the crude oil were included, the total production came to 1.43 million barrels a day.
Condensates are typically found in association with natural gas and crude oil deposits. They consist mainly of light hydrocarbons such as propane and butane and have a wide range of valuable industrial uses.
The average total oil production in the last six months of Buhari's presidency was also higher than the 900,000 barrels per day claimed in the infographic.
Claiming a lower output under Buhari inflates improvements under the current administration.
The data from the petroleum regulatory commission is up to June 2024, when it recorded an average daily oil production of 1.5 million barrels.
Though it has not released July data, NUPRC chief executive officer Gbenga Komolafe told journalists that Nigeria's average daily production as of 23 July 2024 was 1.61 million barrels per day.
The production figures for the remaining eight days of the month would likely improve the month's average daily production, but not significantly.
We rate the claim as mostly correct.
Editor's note: We are fact-checking the last two claims in the infographic: that "debt-to-revenue" ratio was 97% and is now 64%. We will update this report with our findings.
