Claim: Today’s inflation rate is around 16%, whereas, under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration, it remained in the single digits.
Verdict: FALSE.
Under the PDP’s administration, the nation’s inflation rate fluctuated between single and double digits, and presently it is at 21.34% to the CBN December 2022 report.
Full Text
Politicians, especially candidates in Nigeria’s coming 2023 general elections, have been wooing voters since the electoral umpire, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), opened the campaign window in September 2022.
At the national level, especially among the presidential candidates, the campaign has become very intense, with candidates and their teams making numerous claims to prove themselves as the right one.
On January 16, 2023, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign council, Bukola Saraki, was on Arise TV. During the interview, he claimed that today’s inflation rate is around 16%, whereas, under the PDP, it remained in the single digits. The claim was made between 4:18 minutes to 4:25 minutes in the video.
Background
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is Nigeria’s main opposition political party presently and used to be the ruling party in power between 1999 and 2015.
The party is also participating as it has always done since 1999 in the coming 2023 presidential election.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar (1999-2003) is the flag bearer of the party this time, just as in the 2019 general election.
Bukola Saraki was a two-term governor of Kwara State and president of the Nigerian Senate from 2015 to 2019.
The All Progressive Congress, APC, has been the current ruling party since 2015, with Muhammadu Buhari as the president.
Verification
Data from the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN) show the inflation rates in Nigeria from 1999 to 2022.
| Year | Inflation rate (%) |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 6.6 |
| 2000 | 6.9 |
| 2001 | 18.9 |
| 2002 | 12.9 |
| 2003 | 23.8 |
| 2004 | 10 |
| 2005 | 11.6 |
| 2006 | 8.5 |
| 2007 | 6.6 |
| 2008 | 15.1 |
| 2009 | 13.9 |
| 2010 | 11.8 |
| 2011 | 10.3 |
| 2012 | 12 |
| 2013 | 8 |
| 2014 | 8 |
| 2015 | 9.55 |
| 2016 | 18.55 |
| 2017 | 15.37 |
| 2018 | 11.44 |
| 2019 | 11.98 |
| 2020 | 15.75 |
| 2021 | 15.63 |
| 2022 | 21.34 |
The above table and chart show the inflation rates in Nigeria only stayed at single digits in 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2013, 2014 and 2015. For the other years, it was in double digits.
The data also shows that the years when single digits were recorded fall well under the PDP era, except for 2015, which the APC completed.
It is also clear from the data that apart from 2015, the first year of the APC, the ruling party did not record a single digit for the years under review.
However, we can not deduce if Saraki was referring to where his party left it when they handed over power in 2015. The inflation rate in 2014 was 8 per cent and 9.55 per cent in 2015, which simply means that the PDP handed over a single-digit inflation regime to the APC.
Nonetheless, it is obvious that the APC has not been able to keep the rate at a single digit beyond 2015, when it took power from the PDP. But the highest inflation rate of 23.8% in the country’s history in 2003 was under a PDP government.
Conclusion
Our finding shows that the inflation rate under the 16-year PDP was not at single digit only, and the current inflation rate (as of January 2023) is not 16 per cent as claimed by Bukola Saraki. The rate currently stands at 21.34 per cent as of December 2022, in contrast to 23.8% in 2003.
———————————————————————————————————————–
The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame KariKari Fellowship partnership with the newsroom of Wazobia FM and Nigeria Info FM to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
