The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, recently had an interactive session with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) on his economic plans if elected president in the next general elections.
During the dialogue, Obi made multiple claims. Today, Battabox verified some of the claims and our findings revealed that most of the claims were wrong.
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For instance, Obi claimed that “agriculture contributes almost 26 per cent to Nigeria’s GDP.” A check by our reporter, however, shows otherwise. According to NBS data for Q3 2022, agriculture contributes 29.67 per cent to the nation’s overall GDP in Q3 2022, a reduction from 29.94 percent recorded in Q3 2021.
The presidential candidate also claimed that the Netherlands, in 2021, had agricultural exports of $120 billion. Meanwhile, this is false. Checks by Battabox show that the total volume of agro-export in the country in 2021 was summed up to $130.7 billion.
In another instance, Obi claimed that “America today has almost 90 per cent debt to GDP, second China has over 60 per cent debt to GDP, Japan is 230 per cent. Even Singapore we cite every day is 130 per cent debt to GDP. The problem we have as a country is that the money we borrow disappears.”
Again, Battabox discovered that Obi was wrong with the figures he stated.
While the debt-to-GDP ratio in the United States as of 2022 was 124 per cent, China’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 76.9 per cent as of the end of 2022.
Also, Japan’s debt accounted for 263.9 per cent of its GDP and based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Singapore’s official debt-to-GDP ratio is 141.1 percent.
Speaking further, Obi said Nigeria’s debt is N77 trillion but this is wrong too. Nigeria’s debt presently stands at N44.06 trillion, according to the recent debt report published in September 2022 by the Debt Management Office (DMO).
