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Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
NIGERIA’s Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Dame Pauline Tallen, according to a report, said last week that two (2) million Nigerians are raped every year, but there is no reliable public data to support or disprove this claim.
“The Federal Government on Monday launched the Sex Offenders register to tackle issues of rape in Nigeria, saying the over two million Nigerian girls and women being raped annually is unacceptable,” the Daily Trust wrote in twoseparate reports.
“Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development (FMWASD), Dame Pauline Tallen, disclosed this in Abuja while unveiling the register at the 2019 International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women, saying there cannot be any justification for rape.”
When we asked the Director of Press at the Ministry of Women Affairs, Shehu Maikai, about the report, he said he could neither confirm whether the minister truly made the claim nor that it is true because he does not have “the statistics readily available”. He, however, promised to find out and share his discovery with The ICIR. (We will update this report once that happens.)
As far back as in 2011, Caroline Ajie, a human rights lawyer, made a similar claim by estimating that “at least 2 million Nigerian girls experience sexual abuse annually and that only 28 per cent of rape cases are reported”. It is not clear what the estimate is based on.
What is reported to the police
Latest statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) which captures the number of police-recorded offences of rape and sexual violence in various countries up till 2010 does not include figures on Nigeria. This caused Amnesty International, in its 2006 country report of Nigeria to complain that “the Federal Government does not make public any records it holds of incidents of gender-based violence in general nor of rape in particular”.
Since this period, however, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has twice released a breakdown of crime statistics in the country—in 2016 and 2017.
The 2016 report does not specify how many cases of rape were reported but instead states that there were 45,554 cases of “offences against persons”. These include murder, manslaughter, infanticide, concealment of birth, rape and other physical abuse, and so on.
In 2017, the NBS went a step further by providing statistics for specific crimes. According to the statistical agency, that year, 2,279 cases of “rape and indecent assault” were recorded by police across the country.
Figures from the Nigerian Correctional Service on “prison admission by type of offence” are, however, higher. In 2013, 5,797 Nigerians were admitted for “sex offences”. In 2014, this figure dropped to 4,436. And by the second quarter of 2015, the figure was 1,621.
Records from other countries show that in South Africa, 41,583 cases of rape were recorded in 2018/19 and 52,420 cases of sexual offences generally; and at least 38,947 cases of rape were recorded in India in 2016. Each year in the United States, there are on average 433,648 victims of rape and sexual assault—the world’s highest in absolute terms.
Police reports don’t show the full picture
For various reasons, including the fear of stigmatisation, police extortion, and a lack of trust in the criminal justice system, the vast majority of sexual assault victims do not make formal reports at police stations.
In the US according to the National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Justice Department, out of every 1000 cases of sexual assault, only 230 (23 per cent) are reported to the police.
In the United Kingdom, official statistics on sexual violence released by the Ministry of Justice, Office for National Statistics, and Home Office revealed that only about 15 per cent of people who experience sexual assault report to the police.
A public opinion poll conducted by NOIPolls in 2019 shows that underreporting is also a problem in Nigeria. One academic study estimates that only two of 40 cases of rape (five per cent) are reported as a result of “arduous legal requirements needed to prove the cases and the associated stigma”.
Conclusion
There is no evidence supporting the claim attributed to the Women Affairs minister that up to two million Nigerians are raped or sexually assaulted every year.
Most recent statistics from the NBS state that 2,279 cases of rape and indecent assault were reported to the police in 2017. And the Nigerian Correctional Service has said 4,436 people were jailed for sex-related crimes in 2014.
Many studies have, however, established that official records are grossly inadequate in offering insights into the prevalence of sexual violence across the world.
IN DEFENDING Nigeria’s decision to close its land borders, the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service, Hameed Ali, has repeatedly claimed that China similarly shut its borders to international trading for decades and this somehow improved its economic fortunes. But this is not true.
Following a partial closure exercise two months earlier, the Customs Service announced in October that it had banned the importation and exportation of goods through the country’s land borders to ensure “total control over what comes in”.
Despite widespread criticism from many quarters, including from the Economic Community of West African States, President Muhammadu Buhari earlier this month approved the extension of the closure till the end of January 2020.
To justify the closure weeks ago while addressing the press, Ali said in a widely shared video that China also closed its borders “for 40 years to the whole world and today they are great China”.
“Don’t you want to be great Nigeria?” he then asked.
Last Friday, the Customs boss insisted the federal government will not bow to pressure from neighbouring countries to reopen the borders, again citing the Chinese example—only now halving the number of years.
“The Chinese closed their doors for over 20 years and now they are on top,” he said.
“We need to close our own. There is nothing that is being produced today that we cannot consume in Nigeria. Our industrialists do not have to look out to find the market; we have it right here. And we need to grow that market.”
No evidence this ever happened
The ICIR has found no recordproving that China, on its way to becoming a global economic powerhouse, ever shut its frontiers totally to international trade. The contrary appears, in fact, to be the case.
Fatima-Zohra Er-Rafia, an independent researcher and PhD in Business Administration with a focus on China and Japan noted in a 2018 publication that the first of four major factors that made China become the World’s second economic power is “Deng Xiaoping’s opening-up-to-the-world policies and the 1979 Equity Joint Venture Law”. (Xiaoping was China’s paramount leader between 1978 and 1992.)
“Together they have allowed (among other things) foreign capital and Western companies to enter China, transforming the domestic economic landscape entirely from one that is traditional and obsolete to one that is dynamic and modern,” she wrote.
The Chinese, however, did put in place some measure of border closure in the 15th century in reaction to an influx of foreign merchants and settlers and in order to protect local traditions. The isolation of the empire started during the Ming dynasty and continued into Qing dynasty.
Through a series of isolationist policies known as the haijin (or sea ban), the empire ordered the restriction of private maritime trading. Trading still occurred during this period though through piracy and smuggling, and local authorities even disregarded the law by engaging in illicit trading. Nevertheless, the restrictions led to a loss of revenue from taxation, funding difficulties, and a rise in poverty levels.
‘Not in recent times,’ says expert
Hans van de Ven (FBA), a professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of Cambridge, told The ICIR that China has not closed its borders “in recent times” as suggested by Ali.
“If your official is referring to the People’s Republic, China was subject to a US embargo until the 1970s, and hence couldn’t trade with US-allied countries, but that is rather different than China closing its door,” said Hans, who is also a Guest Professor at Nanjing University’s Department of History.
“In this period, China did trade with and exchange personnel with Communist countries. During the Qing dynasty, China did close its doors to foreign trade for a couple of decades, but it needed foreign trade and so opened them again.”
He further emphasised that the link between China closing its country and hence having a vibrant economy, as implied by the Customs boss, “seems very difficult to defend”.
The total trade embargo imposed by the United States followed China’s intervention in the Korean War in the late 1950s and was ended by US President Richard Nixon.
Also writing in response to enquiries from The ICIR, Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese History at Harvard University and Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, described the claim as “factually inaccurate”.
“At no point in the twentieth-century did China (or any political regime governing China) close its borders to international trade,” he said.
“While China’s international trade did vary considerably over the Maoist period, the increase of China’s international trade in the late 1970s coincides with the rapid growth in the Chinese economy (though the causal relationship between these phenomena continues to be debated).”
World Bank statistics negate claim
A look through data from the World Bank shows that there was no time in China’s history, from 1960 till date, when either imports or exports of goods and services seized completely.
In 1960, imports into the country were worth $2.6 billion and have risen over the years to an all-time high of $2.5 trillion in 2018. The lowest point was in 1962 when imports were worth $1.4 billion. The steep in imports noticeably started in the 1990s.
The data on exports show a similar trend. All exports were worth $2.6 billion in 1960 and have risen to $2.7 trillion in 2018. The lowest value was $1.9 billion in 1962.
Interestingly, statistics from the World Bank also reveal that the ascending curve in China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) corresponds sharply and proportionally to the curves representing the weight of its imports and exports. This means the country’s GDP increased at the same time and rate as transactions with other countries received a boost.
The trend of China’s GDP, import, and export growths. Source: World Bank National Accounts Data
“Through the 1990s, China began to clock rapid growth rates and joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001 gave it another jolt. Trade barriers and tariffs with other countries were lowered and soon Chinese goods were everywhere,” the BBC reported in October, citing David Mann, global chief economist at Standard Chartered Bank.
‘It is a fallacy’
Former BudgIT head of research and Senior Project Officer at the International Budget Partnership, Atiku Samuel, also described the claim that China closed its borders to the whole world as “actually a fallacy”.
“China has never and will never close its borders to the whole world,” he emphatically told The ICIR.
“What they had was more of a stringent, regimented trade agreement … The second thing is that there is no nation, even North Korea that in quote people believe now that they have a closed border, they still do trade with their neighbours. They still do trade with China. They still do some level of trade with other people in the world. And that’s about the most closed economy you can think about now. In clear terms, a country cannot exist without doing trade with its neighbouring countries.”
Samuel said the situation in (West) Africa is a complex one since the communities in various countries were already trading among themselves before modern borders were introduced.
“My own conclusion is that nothing like that exists in the world. I am yet to see it. What you can have is some level of restriction around trade. And then even the modalities for ensuring you have a closed system can never happen in Nigeria, except we have money to fence all the 4000 kilometres (of the border).”
The policy analyst also said, in 2015, Nigeria exported goods worth about N1.04 trillion to West African countries and imported about only N74 billion worth of goods.
Indeed, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), between 2010 and 2017, Nigeria exported goods worth up to $25.04 billion to other West African countries while it imported only goods worth $9.09 billion. And, in 2017 alone, its export value to the region was $2.6 billion, far outweighing its import value of $309.1 million.
The implication of this, Samuel explained, is that “Nigeria has more advantage in terms of trade with West Africa … We sell more to them than we actually take from there. That is given. That is a statistic of government”.
He said, with the border closure, Nigeria is not only breaching the ECOWAS free-trading policy but is also encouraging smuggling and black market transactions.
The solution, he concluded, is to address why goods produced locally cannot compete with cheaper ones from other countries and to make legitimate importation hassle-free by improving the ports.
“We need to look at why the cost of production in Nigeria is high and we need to begin to address those issues. That is the only practical way to stop unnecessary importation.”
Verdict
The claim made by the Customs boss that China, towards becoming a global superpower, closed its borders to the whole world is false. China made that move in the 15th and 16th century, but not only were the protectionist policies unsuccessful and widely disobeyed, they also led to increased poverty levels and reduced government revenue.
The rise of China’s GDP, The ICIR likewise observed, in fact, corresponds over the years with an increase in trading with other countries.
The country did not close its borders in the 20th century when its economic indices sharply improved but rather was on the receiving end of a 21-year trade embargo imposed by the United States and its allies.
DESPITE public outcry against the rise of information disorder in Nigeria, partisan groups and social media trolls still circulated images that turned out to be misleading during the governorship elections held on Saturday, November 16 in Kogi and Bayelsa States.
Many photos have been posted and shared on various social media platforms, illustrating violence, disruptions of the electoral process and vote buying as captured in the two states. While some of the images tell the true story, others are deployed to mislead Nigerians.
The ICIR finds some of such photographs to be dated and explains how we arrived at this conclusion.
Number 1
An image of youths holding of cudgels was shared on three different platforms including; Vanguard Newspaper, a Facebook page identified as The Buharist Reporters and a Facebook user identified as Shima Ate.
On the Vanguard Newspaper, the image was used to report an attack of journalists by thugs at Ayaingba, Kogi state.
The same image and link was reshared by Facebook user Shima Ate on his personal page and the image was shared also by the Facebook page, The Buhari Reporters, that used it to report that “INEC cancelled polls in Ologi Ogbla LGA in Bayelsa State.
A search was conducted on the image using a reverse image search engine, Tineye, and it was found that the image has been used 140 times with the earliest post shared on July 2016 by a blog called Ansutalktalk.
Number 2
A Twitter page, Confluenceviews, shared two photos, claiming that they depict disruptions perpetrated by thugs in Kogi state. One of the photos shared shows a collection of Permanent Voters Card (PVC) and a short gun. The caption shared with the photo reads: “Thugs nabbed with PVC and other materials this early morning.”
A check of the image was run on Tineye and it showed that the image was first shared in February 2019 by Naijapals under the file name ‘hoodlum PVC Ibom’.
Another image shared on the same page showed a group of men lying on the ground, and what appears to be seized weapons were laid close to them. The photo caption reads: “Some thugs identified to be working for PDP has been nabbed by the law enforcement agency”
A search on Tineye showed that the image was first shared in June 2015 on Lazywrita.com and tagged ‘political thugs’, the same image was again used by the same website in July 2015.
Number 3
Another photo was used by a Facebook page, Info Hq to report the disruption of elections in Anyigba, Kogi state, where hoodlums were reported to have snatched ballot boxes. A search on Tineye showed that image used by four different news sites with the earliest being shared in March 2019 by Dailypost.ng.
The ICIR’s check shows that all these photographs were used in a way that is dishonest and therefore finds them as misleading.
PICTURES from the general elections conducted four years ago and 2015 xenophobic attacks in South Africa have been recently shared in support of claims about violence in Kogi and Bayelsa gubernatorial elections, The ICIR has observed.
A report by The Nigerian News, a “citizen’s online publishing and broadcasting platform”, shared on Tuesday made use of a suspicious picture to illustrate alleged thug attacks in Kogi State. (Archived here.)
“Ahead of Kogi November 16th election, the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Natasha Akpoti, and his campaign team have been allegedly beaten up by a suspected team of thugs,” the platform wrote.
“In a yet to be confirmed report, the campaign organisation was attacked at the venue of the INEC Nigeria Stakeholders meeting ahead of the poll.”
However, combining the TinEye reverse image search tool and Google search engine, The ICIR traced the photo back to April 2015 in South Africa, when xenophobic attacks led to the death and displacement of foreigners.
Newsweek, in its caption, explained that the pictures show a man gesturing “with a stick outside a hostel during anti-immigrant violence in Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 17, 2015”. This is according to a news report published the same day.
The picture was taken by Johannesburg-based Reuters photographer, Siphiwe Sibeko.
Screenshot of a report by The Nigerian News.
The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), a not-for-profit research and advocacy organisation, has also pointed out the resurfacing of pictures originally from the 2015 general elections.
A Facebook user, Adams Sirprosper, had written that a group of thugs “invited by APC [All Progressives Congress]” and headed for the Kogi West senatorial district were arrested. But closer scrutiny of the picture attached to this claim shows that it is from a totally different context dating back to April 2015.
As reported by various news blogs, days after the general elections, the pictured “political thugs” had been arrested by security operatives in Nsit Ubiom Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.
“The hoodlums were caught with dangerous weapons such as dane guns, cutlasses, cans of fuel, lighters and charms as they attributed their actions to the work of the devil,” one report stated.
The CDD, with observers in various local governments in both Kogi and Bayelsa, has also noted as false a claim that Adoni and Ogoni militants, hired by Jonathan Obuebite (the Bayelsa state commissioner for information and orientation) and Tom Ateke (ex-leader of the Niger Delta Vigilante), attacked members of the APC in Nembe Local Government Area.
“CDD fact-checkers investigated and found out that nothing of such happened,” the non-profit reported.
“There are no citings [sic] of militant groups at Nembe River, as the river is guarded by security personnel. There have been relative peace at Nembe at the time of this fact check. The peddler of this news report, put it out to cause unnecessary tension in Nembe LGA.”
CDD fact-checkers have similarlyestablished that, contrary to the claims, no shooting or snatching of voting materials took place in Nembe Local Government.
THE pictures shared by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) alongside its press release on the state of bad roads in Nigeria are not of Nigeria. Those pictures are from Liberia, a Fact Check by The ICIR has shown.
The PDP, in a post of November 8, shared on its official Twitter handle, @OfficialPDPNig showed two pictures of supposed bad roads in Nigeria, and advised the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola to resign and apologise to Nigerians after his statement that Nigerian roads are not as bad as often portrayed.
As at the time of this report, the tweet has generated 351 retweets and 931 likes.
Many Nigerians have criticised Mr. Fashola over the statement, including a non-governmental organisation, Leadership and Accountability Initiative, that wrote to the minister, inviting him over on an all-expense-paid tour of Nigerian roads to see how bad Nigerians roads were.
Checks by The ICIR revealed that the images of bad roads in the tweet post are not the bad roads in Nigeria. Rather, they are pictures of bad roads in Liberia.
A reverse image search of one of the pictures revealed that the picture surfaced online for the first time in 2016. A Liberian local newspaper Daily Observerhad reported how the road condition in south-eastern Liberia was causing serious havoc for motorists, passengers and students who no longer use the road network because of its deplorable condition.
Another reverse image search on the second picture showed that the picture was first used online in February 2017. The same Daily Observer newspaper had used it to report that five South-eastern counties’ road work was underway. Again, in September 2017, the Daily Observer used the picture to also report how the deplorable condition in one of the counties had delayed people from travelling and even travelled at high costs to reach their destination.
In an editorial dated March 21, 2018, Globe Afrique, also a Liberian based newspaper had published an editorial titled “Weah’s Vision for a road network excellent, but why is the IMF concern” using one of the pictures as its featured image.
Also, the number plate on one of the vehicles in the pictures is different from the number plate issued in Nigeria.
In conclusion, pictures in the PDP’s tweet are not of the bad roads in Nigeria, but bad roads in Liberia.
PICTURES showing Nigerians protesting President Muhammadu Buhari’s claimed medical tourism in London are not true, a Fact Check by The ICIR has shown.
The pictures, two in number are being circulated by one twitter handle, @PDPVanguard, with the caption: “BREAKING NEWS: HUNDREDS of Nigerians hits London streets protesting @MBuhari’s medical tourism visits while abandoning Nigeria hospital unequipped and understaff”.
This tweet post has generated 1,261 retweets and 2,100 likes.
Buhari departed Saudi Arabia for a two-week private visit to the United Kingdom last Saturday. Though, the reason for his private visit was not officially announced to the public.
Checks by The ICIR revealed that the images claimed to be pictures of Nigerians protesting in the UK is not a recent one. In fact, the picture aged four years.
The two pictures show Nigerians with National flags gathered in front of a building which turned out to be Nigeria High Commission on Northumberland Avenue in London when Google Map Satellite image was used to verify the location.
A reverse image search of the pictures showed the picture surfaced online for the first time in November 2015. One of the pictures was used by a blog called TheNews-Chronicle when it reported Nigerians protesting the unchecked corruption, fraud, illegal arrest, and criminal torture of Nigerians in the UK.
The pictures have since been used by different blogs and websites to tell different stories. For instance, these pictures were used by one blog, Gistmania to tell the story of how Nigerians in the UK stormed the Nigeria High Commission, demanding to see President Buhari who was in the country on a medical vacation in 2017.
A 20-year-old hoax suggesting that staring at female breasts has the effect of promoting longevity in men has been circulated by the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, the government-controlled news wire service.
The study is said to have been conducted over a five year period by “a German scientist, Karen Weatherby, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine”. The year it was published was not stated. After the scientist instructed 250 men to stare at breasts lustfully at least 10 minutes in a day and another group of 250 men to abstain from this, the report said, he concluded that the health of the first group of men improved significantly.
The study said men should stare at breasts for 10 minutes a day to improve the wellness of their hearts and to live longer.
“Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation. Gazing at breasts makes men healthier and engaging in this activity a few minutes daily cuts the risk of stroke and heart attack by half,” Weatherby was quoted to have said.
“We believe that by doing so consistently, the average man can extend his life for four to five years.”
However, the report has been debunked as far back as in May 2000, by Snope, a prominent fact-checking website launched in 1994.
“This has to be one of the ultimate male fantasies, second only to the notion that drinking beer and watching football makes one more intelligent. (Or maybe second only to the thought of being instructed by doctors to look at buxom women for five years straight, all in the name of science.),” the website wrote sarcastically.
“Watching busty females may indeed be good for a man’s health and add years to his life (by giving him something to look forward to, if nothing else), but men who want to make the case for engaging in this behaviour to their wives or girlfriends will have to do so without relying on the imprimatur of the medical community.”
Snopes further established that the study was never printed in the New England Journal of Medicine “or any other major medical journal” as claimed. It is, rather, a rephrased version of an article that has appeared at least twice (May 13, 1997, and March 21, 2000) on the Weekly World News, a popular tabloid that broke mostly fictional news in the United States between 1979 and 2007.
According to the Washington Post, “The Weekly World News was not one of those sleazy tabloids that cover tawdry celebrity scandals. It was a sleazy tabloid that covered events that seemed to occur in a parallel universe, a fevered dream world where pop culture mixed with urban legends, conspiracy theories and hallucinations. Maybe WWN played fast and loose with the facts, but somehow it captured the spirit of the age — and did it in headlines as perfect as haiku: ‘DEAD ROCKSTARS RETURN ON GHOST PLANE!’ ‘BLIND MAN REGAINS SIGHT AND DUMPS UGLY WIFE!’”
“The most creative newspaper in American history, the Weekly World News broke the story that Elvis faked his death and was living in Kalamazoo, Mich,” Peter Carlson, the Post’s staff writer, added.
“It also broke the story that the lost continent of Atlantis was found near Buffalo. And the story that Hillary Clinton was having a love affair with P’lod, an alien with a foot-long tongue. And countless other incredible scoops.”
Picture of the report has published by the Weekly World News. Credit: Snopes.
Snopes said though the tabloid “occasionally slips up and prints a true story”, it suspects the report on the positive effects of breast-staring belongs in the category of similar articles titled “‘HOW TO TELL IF YOUR DOG WORSHIPS SATAN!’ and ‘NEW REMOTE-CONTROL DEVICE GIVES WOMEN ORGASMS — AT UP TO 80 YARDS AWAY!’”
Another fact-check of the claim published in 2009 (and updated in May 2019) by LiveAbout described it as an “email hoax circulating since March/April 2000” and concluded that it is false.
“No such study was ever published in the New England Journal of Medicine,” wrote David Emery, an internet folklore expert and debunker of urban legends, hoaxes, and popular misconceptions.
“A search of the thousands of peer-reviewed articles contained in the National Institutes of Health medical journal database turns up zero items documenting the health benefits of staring at women’s breasts, and, for that matter, zero items authored by ‘Dr. Karen Weatherby’ (who does not exist, so far as I can tell).”
LESS than a day after The ICIR reported its failure to update information on its website, the Nigerian Correctional Service has corrected places where it wrongly referred to itself as the Prisons Service.
In a report published on Monday, The ICIRobserved that two months after President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Nigerian Correctional Service Act which repealed the old law and gave the institution a new name, this change had not been effected on its site.
However, another visit to the platform on Wednesday revealed that name has been updated in the various sections. The old logo has also been removed and replaced with text.
A screenshot of the Nigerian Correctional Services’ home page before the update.A screenshot of the Nigerian Correctional Services’ home page after the update.
It remains unclear if this update will be extended to the offices of the Service alongside other materials, as there is no provision in the 2020 federal budget for this purpose.
IN his speech delivered on Tuesday to mark Nigeria’s 59th Independence Anniversary celebration, President Muhammadu Buhari cited an outdated figure of the allocation federal government has released for capital projects in the 2018 budget year.
“We are significantly increasing investments in critical infrastructure. Last year, capital releases only commenced with the approval of the Budget in June 2018. However, as at 20th June this year, up to N1.74 trillion had been released for capital projects in the 2018 fiscal year,” he said, before promising to accelerate the implementation of the 2019 capital project.
The president’s claim has, however, been found to conflict with updated figures provided by the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) in its 2018 Capital Performance for MDAs report.
OAGF’s figures were obtained by The ICIR in July through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, and reflect capital releases as at June 30.
The document from the Accountant-General’s office states that the grand total of capital releases for the previous fiscal year was N2.06 trillion, including funding from Sukuk proceeds. This is 73.6 per cent of the total approved capital budget of N2.8 trillion.
Out of the N2.06 trillion, only N63.8 billion was not utilised by some of the MDAs.
The difference between Buhari’s and the Accountant-General’ figures is N320 billion.
Buhari also said in his speech that his administration “inherited a skewed economy, where the oil sector comprised only 8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product”.
However, reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show a slightly different figure. The oil sector represented 10.45 per cent of Nigeria’s total real GDP at the end of the first quarter in 2015.
At the second quarter during which Buhari was first sworn-in as president, the NBS states that the “oil sector represented 9.80 per cent of total real GDP”.
The figure did not drop to 8.06 per cent until the fourth quarter.
Buhari’s Democracy Day speech delivered in June was similarly found by The ICIR to contain an unsubstantiated projected growth rate figure.
“We now have witnessed eight quarters of positive growth in the economy and our GDP is expected to grow by 2.7 per cent this year,” he had said.
But the figure contradicted similar projections from the Central Bank of Nigeria, Budget Office, African Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
THE Rural Electrification Agency, REA, has reacted to fact-check published by The ICIR on Monday, which debunked the claim that it has commissioned Africa’s “largest off-grid solar hybrid power plant” in Bayero University Kano (BUK).
The claim was made earlier in September by REA’s Managing Director, Damilola Ogunbiyi, and has been repeated by others, including Minister of Power Saleh Mamman.
The ICIRfound a solar plant in Burkina Faso, also hybrid and off-grid, that has a capacity much larger than that of the recently unveiled project in BUK.
Fabien Cadaut, the Africa Energy Business Area Marketing Manager of Wärtsilä, the company that built the hybrid plant in Burkina Faso, confirmed that the project “is to date the world’s largest solar hybrid project and therefore larger than the one delivered in Nigeria”.
But reacting to the report on Tuesday, Ayang Ogbe, REA’s Director of Promotions (Information and Outreach), insisted that REA’s claim is correct and that the fact-check is presenting a “wrong impression”.
“You cannot say that apple is similar to orange,” the REA said during a phone conversation. “What I’m saying is they have different components. If you go to do any search about solar hybrid plants, you’ll see a thousand and one of them. But what we have in BUK is unique.”
In an email later sent to The ICIR by Ogbe, he said the plant in Burkina Faso does not qualify as a solar hybrid power plant but a “hybrid fuel/solar plant” because solar energy is not the dominant energy source.
“The Burkina Faso Project in question is synched to a 55 MW heavy oil fuel plant which makes it a hybrid fuel/solar plant (according to PV magazine) because heavy oil is the dominant source of energy,” he said.
“It is important to note that in the newest technology for solar hybrid powerplants, the PV component should be higher than any other component, which is provided in the Energizing Education BUK project. We maintain that the 7.1MW BUK project is the largest solar hybrid project with Battery storage in Africa.”
He concluded: “In view of these findings, the report published and twitted [sic.] by ICIR is INCORRECT.”
An email sent on Wednesday to METKA, the company commissioned to build the powerplant, asking if it holds the same view as REA is yet to be replied.
Hybrid solar plant or not?
According to Dr. Thomas Hillig Energy Consulting, experts on hybrid power systems and renewable energy solutions, “Hybrid power plants combine at least two different energy types [and] rather common is the combination of diesel-gensets and renewable energy systems with or without storage.”
“The actual configuration is very site and company-specific,” it added.
The World Journal of Mechanics, in 2019, also stated that “the hybrid renewable power generation is a system aimed at the production and utilisation of the electrical energy stemming from more than one source, provided that at least one of them is renewable.”
We checked PV magazine reports cited by the REA to substantiate its position. PV magazine is a publication that independently reports solar PV news and was launched in 2008 by the international photovoltaics (PV) community.
In its first report about the plant in Burkina Faso published in March 2017, the magazine described the project first as a “15 MW hybrid PV plant”. PV (photovoltaic) essentially refers to electricity derived from solar energy, and so a hybrid PV plant is the same as a hybrid solar plant.
It used the same description in its 2018 report but added that the project, synchronised with a 55 MW oil-driven power plant, “is one of the largest hybrid fuel/solar plants in the world”.
The ICIR has, however, found no evidence to suggest that the extent of solar energy composition in a hybrid plant affects its description.
Larry Edeh, country director of the Nigeria Alternative Energy Expo and director of the Sustainable Energy Practitioners Association of Nigeria (SEPAN), confirmed this during a phone interview on Thursday.
“A solar hybrid power plant”, he explained, is one where solar energy is augmented with other sources of energy, such as backup batteries or generators; and a powerplant can be called that even if the solar component is lesser in capacity compared to the energy source complementing it.
“These hybrid solutions enable fossil fuel generators to operate at lower loads, thereby significantly reducing the costs related to fuel usage, operation and maintenance,” explained Steven Murdoch, sales director at Global Mining. “They generate solar power but once the capacity drops or becomes intermittent, the generators power on to take up the load.”
Comparing composition: Wärtsilä vs BUK plant
On March 16, 2018, Wärtsilä Energy Solutions launched a solar plant with a 15 megawatt (MW) capacity installed for an off-grid gold mine belonging to Iamgold Essakane SA and located in north-eastern Burkina Faso. The mine produces about 400,000 ounces of gold every year.
The plant is hybridised with an existing 55 MW diesel power plant, thus totally a capacity of 70 MW.
According to the company, “The engine power plant provides backup, while the solar farm produces energy during the day. The solar PV plant and the engine power plant are controlled and operated in synchronisation, making it the largest engine-solar PV hybrid power plant in Africa.”
Essakane Solar SAS is composed of inverters and switchgear, a control system, and “approximately 130,000 photovoltaic panels”.
“It is estimated that this will reduce fuel consumption by some 6 million litres per year, while reducing the plant’s annual CO2 emissions by as much as 18,500 tons. This project has generated more than 200 employments during the construction phase and is expected to create 75 permanent jobs during the operation phase,” Wärtsilä announced.
On the other hand, the BUK plant, built as part of REA’s Energising Education Programme (EEP), is said to have a 7.1 MW capacity and is expected to supply electricity to 55,815 students and 3,077 workers of the university.
Information released after the launch at BUK states that the total capacity of the solar panels is 3.5 MW, as against Burkina Faso’s 15 MW. It also says the total installed capacity of the plant is 7.1 MW as against the other plant’s 70 MW.
Infographic released by REA says the solar panels are hybridised with backup generators having a capacity of 2.4MW. The project is made possible with the installation of 10,680 solar panels, and also, when fully operational, is to save 49,384 tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions and end the use of 16.5MW petrol and diesel generators.
Also, it is noted that the plant’s construction and installation have created up to 182 jobs, the bulk going to labourers and bricklayers.
Verdict unchanged
REA’s Energising Education Project is no doubt unique, particularly in how it also provides street lighting to schools and establishes training centres for students on renewable energy. Available evidence nevertheless contradicts the claim that the off-grid solar hybrid plants introduced under the project are the largest on the continent.
