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As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 general elections, political actors have continued to debate Bola Tinubu’s 2023 electoral performance and the impact of his administration’s economic policies.
On Sept. 15, 2026, Solomon Dalung, former Minister of Sports Development and chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and Bala Ibrahim, Director of Media and Publicity of the All Progressives Congress (APC), appeared as guests on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
They made claims about Tinubu’s 2023 votes and the price of petrol in Nigeria compared with the United Kingdom.
DUBAWA identified and verified two of the claims made during the programme.
Claim 1: Dalung claimed that over 5.5 million of Tinubu’s 8.7 million total votes came predominantly from Northern Nigeria.
Quote: “You cannot dismiss the influence of President Buhari on those 8.7 million votes, over 5.5 million of which came predominantly from the northern part of the country, where voters were deceived by the Muslim-Muslim ticket.”
Verdict: True. According to the official results of the 2023 presidential election released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes nationwide.
Data compiled by TheCable shows Tinubu received about 2.64 million votes in the North-West, 1.76 million in the North-Central, and 1.19 million in the North-East.
Combined, these figures amount to approximately 5.59 million votes. This represents about 63.6% of Tinubu’s total votes nationwide.
The figures therefore show that more than 5.5 million of Tinubu’s 8.79 million votes came from the three northern geopolitical zones.
Claim 2: Ibrahim claimed petrol is cheaper in Nigeria than in the UK, where petrol costs approximately £1.70 per litre.
Quote: “Yes, petrol is more expensive, but compare the average price of petrol in Nigeria to advanced economies like the UK or US, and you will find it is cheaper in Nigeria. Before coming into the studio, I checked: a litre of petrol sells for about £1.70 in the UK. Convert that to Naira, and it is higher. It is cheaper to buy petrol in Nigeria than in the UK”
Verdict: Misleading. DUBAWA found that while direct currency conversion makes Nigerian petrol cheaper per litre than the UK’s, the claim ignores the gap between both countries’ minimum wages.
The average UK petrol price stood at £1.71 per litre, as of Sept. 15, 2026. Meanwhile, the UK government said the national living wage for workers aged 21 and above increased to £12.71 per hour as of Apr. 1, 2026. Using an eight-hour workday calculation, a person earning the minimum wage in the UK would take home £1,880 (N3,350,160) per month if they worked for a month. In contrast, Nigeria’s statutory national minimum wage is N70,000 per month.
At this rate, a litre of fuel would cost a UK worker around eight minutes of his working time. A Nigerian worker, by contrast, would spend about three hours to buy a single litre, which costs around N1,340 to N1,395 in major Nigerian cities, as of the time of filing this report.
This means that although petrol is nominally cheaper in Nigeria than in the UK when converted using the exchange rate, it takes up a much larger share of a Nigerian minimum-wage worker’s earnings.
Therefore, describing petrol as simply “cheaper” in Nigeria is misleading without accounting for purchasing power or income levels.
The comparison matters because a litre of petrol costing less in naira than its pound equivalent does not mean it is more affordable for the average Nigerian worker.