A tweep simply identified as Ify Ella has claimed in a tweet archived here that Baze University owned by Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed is the costliest university in Nigeria.
This was in an attempt to promote the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, and his running mate, Haruna Magashi ahead of the February 25 election.
The tweet reads:
“Obi chose Datti, the man with the costliest university in Nigeria. But Sowore chose Magashi, the biggest Human Rights lawyer in Kano State. Our party remains entirely for the masses! Vote #SoworeMagashi2023.”
The post made on Wednesday, January 25, 2023, has since garnered over 2,000 views, and more than 90 likes as of when it was retrieved on Saturday, January 28, 2023.
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Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed is the running mate to Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in this year’s election.
He is also the Founder and Prochancelor of Baze University, a private tertiary educational institution based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
CLAIM
Datti’s university, Baze University, is the costliest in Nigeria.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.
An assessment of the rankings of Nigerian universities by multiple platforms revealed that Baze university was not the most expensive university in the country.
A report published by Statista in September 2022 on the average annual undergraduate tuition fees at private Nigerian universities in 2019 put Nile University of Nigeria as the most expensive, with Baze University coming second on the list.
The report shows that the average annual tuition fee for bachelor’s degree programmes at Nile University and Baze University stood at ₦2.4 million (about 5,800 US dollars) and ₦2.3 million (about 5,500 US dollars) in 2019 respectively.
Also, in a rating by Legit NG published in October 2022, Nile University of Nigeria was ranked ahead of Baze University in terms of tuition fees.
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The fees range at Nile University stood between ₦2,400,000 and ₦5,750,000 while that of Baze was between ₦2,722,500 and ₦3,025,000, according to the report.
In another report published by Inside OAU in December 2022, Baze University was put at number 3 on the list of top ten most expensive private universities in Nigeria.
THE VERDICT
The claim that Datti’s university, Baze University, is the costliest in Nigeria is FALSE; multiple reports show it is not.
