An image has been retweeted over a thousand times alongside a claim that 18.8 million Nigerians have lost their jobs since Muhammadu Buhari became the country’s president in May 2015.
The claim was made by a twitter user @Chxta on August 16.
The tweet features a graph and a caption which put forward that 54.4 million Nigerians were in full time employment as at May 29, 2015 and that currently, that number has reduced to 35.6 million people.
The tweet also alluded that 18.8 million people lost their jobs within the last 5 years.
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The tweet reads: “As of 29 May 2015, Nigeria had 54.4 million people in full time work. Today, Nigeria has only 35.6 million people working. Buhari has destroyed 18.8 million jobs in just over five years.”
THE CLAIMS:
From the tweet, these three claims were established:
Claim 1. That Nigeria had 54.4 million people in full time job as at May 29, 2015.
Claim 2. That Nigeria currently (August 2020) has 35.6 million people working full time.
Claim 3: That 18.8 million full time jobs was lost within 5 five years under President Buhari’s administration.
THE FINDINGS:
Claim 1
In a bid to verify the claim, The FactCheckhub checked the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website for the data on Nigeria’s labour statistics as at May 29, 2015.
May 29 falls on the 2nd quarter (Q2), The FactCheckHub could not find the 2015 NBS report, however data for the country’s labour force for the 2015 was included in the Q1 –Q3 2017 unemployment report.
In the report, it was stated that approximately 55.7 million people were fully employed in the 2015-Q1, 54.4 million people in 2015- Q2, 55.2 million people in 2015-Q3 and 54.5 million in 2015-Q4.
The data shows that 54.4 million people were employed as at May 29, 2015 which makes the claim TRUE.
Claim 2
The FactCheckHub checked the NBS website for the 2020 data on Nigeria’s labour force. From the data for the 2020-Q2, it was stated that approximately 35.6 million people are fully employed out of the 80.3 million labour force population. This also makes the claim that only 35.6 million Nigerians are fully employed as at 2020 TRUE.
Claim 3
President Buhari was sworn-in on May 29, 2015, which implies that he has spent over five years as Nigeria’s president.
To ascertain if 18.8 million jobs were lost as alluded in the tweet, The FactCheckHub compared the number of Nigerians fully employed as at May 29, 2015 to the current number of Nigerians that are fully employed as at June 2020. The use of June was selected because the NBS report is presented quarterly. The data for August will be in the the 2020 Q3 report which ends in September.
The difference between the number of people who were fully employed as May 2015Â – 54.4 million and as at June 2020Â – 35.6 million is 18.8 million.
While it cannot be determined if the 18.8 million people have lost their jobs or moved from full time employment to other form of employments within the period under review, the NBS records shows that there is a difference of 18.8 million in the number of people who were fully employed in the country in comparison to five years ago which makes the claim TRUE.Â
The NBS refers to fully employed people as people who work forty hours and above.
THE VERDICT:Â
From the data presented above, the claim that Nigeria had 54.4 million people in full time job as at May 29, 2015 is TRUE.
The claim that Nigeria currently (August 2020) has 35.6 million people in full time jobs is TRUE.
The claim that 18.8 million full time jobs were lost within 5 five years under President Buhari’s administration is TRUE.
