Fact-Check: Ezekwesili Makes Incorrect claims on youth, women voting population

Fact-Check: Ezekwesili Makes Incorrect claims on youth, women voting population

Fact-Check: Are Ezekwesili’s claims about youths, women voting population true? Verdict: Two of three claims are incorrect Full Story: Dr. Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili appeared in an interview on Channels Television’s Hard Copy programme on Friday 9th December, 2022. During the exclusive interview with Channel Television’s Anchor, Maope Ogun-Yusuf, the former Minister of Education claimed that

Fact-Check: Are Ezekwesili’s claims about youths, women voting population true?

Verdict: Two of three claims are incorrect

Full Story:

Dr. Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili appeared in an interview on Channels Television’s Hard Copy programme on Friday 9th December, 2022.

During the exclusive interview with Channel Television’s Anchor, Maope Ogun-Yusuf, the former Minister of Education claimed that women and the youthful segment of the country’s population were  moving towards a direction of change in Nigeria.

Among her specific claims include the fact:

  1. Women make up about 51 percent of the voting population in Nigeria

2: Youths formed more than 60% of the electorate.

  1. It was during her time that the design of the school feeding programme commenced.

Are these claims true? It is incumbent that the public should know. Hence we checked the veracity of her claims.

Claim:1: That women make up about 51 per cent of the voting population. Is this true?

Verdict: Incorrect. It is 44.3 million at 47.4%.  

Verification 

During a quarterly meeting by the INEC Chairman with political parties for the year 2022 held at the INEC Conference room in Abuja on Wednesday 26th October, 2022, he gave out the demographic distribution of the newly registered voters and noted that there was a slightly higher number of females eligible voters which is estimated to be 4.8 million or 50.82% against 51 percent claimed by Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili.

Again, the 2019 INEC report put the total number of registered voters at 84,004,084 million where the number of eligible female voters was 39.6 million at 47.14%. according to BudgIT .

SOURCE:yourbudgit.com

 

Given that the preliminary register of voters in Nigeria now stands at 93.5 million, with the 9.5million new voters added to the existing register of 84,004,084, a further search on INEC’s website for the demographic distribution of the gender of eligible voters in the 2023 election proves abortive.

However, when we summed up the 39.5m total registered female voters (at 47.1%) in 2019 with the 4.8 million new eligible female registered voters, the total registered female eligible voters in Nigeria now stands at 44.3million at 47.4%.

 

             Total population of registered (2019) Total registered female voters (2019)

 

Total population of registered voters (2022) New female registered voters (2022) Total female registered voters (2019 and 2022)
84m 39.5m (47.1%) 93.5m 4.8m 44.3m (47.4%)

Data: INEC. Table: NDR

 

Claim: 2: That youth formed more than 60% of the electorate. Is this true?

Verdict: Incorrect. it is 50.1 million or 53.6%

We checked statistics released by INEC and YIAGA Africa to verify this claim. During INEC’s third regular consultative meeting with political parties, the INEC Chairman, Professor Yakubu, noted that out of 9,518,188 new registered voters, in terms of demographic distribution, 7.2 million new voters or 76.5% are young people between 18-34.

Again, in YIAGA Africa’s analysis of the 2019 data released by INEC,  there were 42.9 million registered youths in 2019 at 47.1%.

Since a further check on INEC’s website for the demographic distribution of the current 93.5 million eligible voters proved abortive, we summed up the 7.2 million youths in the 2022 new register to the existing 42.9 million youths in 2019, and arrived at 50.1 million or 53.6% as the youthful population of the electorate.

            Total population of registered (2019) Total registered Youth voters (2019)

 

Total population of registered voters (2022) New Youth registered voters (2022) Total Youth registered voters (2019 and 2022)
84m      42.9m (47.1%) 93.5m 7.2m 50.1 (53.6%)

 Data: INEC. Table: NDR

Claim:3 : That it was during her time as a Minister that the design of the school feeding programme commenced. Is this true?

Verdict: True. The Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) commenced during Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency when Oby Ezekwesili served as both Minister of Solid Minerals and Education respectively.

Verification

According to reliefweb, on September 26, 2005, the government of the former President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a home-grown school feeding program aimed at improving the nutritional intake by at least 25 million children of school age in Africa’s most populous country.

The program was to take off with a total number of 2.5 million children or 10 percent of the total population of primary school children expected to take part in the pilot phase of the program aimed at providing one meal per school day for every child in Nigerian schools.

Corroborating the above source, the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) strategy document (2016 to 2020) stated that the Federal Ministry of Education (2004) was the designated implementing agency for a phased-pilot rollout, beginning with 12 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) selected from the six geopolitical zones.

Conclusion:

From multiple sources, it is revealed that the claims made by Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili that:

1: Women make up about 51 percent of the voting population is incorrect.

2: Youth formed more than 60% of the electorate is incorrect.

  1. It was during her time that the design of the school feeding programme commenced is true.

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