By: Raji Olatunji
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has again made claims that he took Lagos IGR from N600 million to N5 billion monthly during his administration as governor of the state.
Tinubu, who is the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 general elections, stated this during an interview with BBC News Africa.
The video posted on Twitter on December 6 has since garnered over 1.5 million views as of Friday, December 9, 2022.
In an attempt to convince the electorate to vote for him, Tinubu, who served as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007, said he had a track record of building a modest state that could stand as a country.
“I am Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I have governed Lagos. I built a modest state that could be a country on its own,” he said.
“I have led an administration that is so prudent from N600 million internally generated revenue, to N5 billion a month. That’s a record. Nobody else can brag about that.”
Tinubu and his cronies differ on Lagos IGR
While Tinubu claims Lagos IGR stood at N600m per month in 1999, his running mate, Kashim Shettima, had said the state’s IGR stood at N700 million in 1999.
Speaking at the annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in August, Shettima said Tinubu raised Lagos IGR from N700 million when he took office as governor in 1999, adding that the revenue had gone up to N51 billion monthly.
Ben Akabueze, Tinubu’s commissioner for budget and national planning in 2007, had also at a time said Lagos IGR was only a meagre N500 million per month in 1999.
Chimaroke Nnamani, former governor of Enugu state and Tinubu supporter, also claimed in August 2022 that, “When Bola Ahmed Tinubu was governor, Lagos State’s IGR rose from 600 million naira per month to over 8 billion naira per month.”
Tinubu, his own commissioner, and his running mate have quoted different figures at different times.
What does the data show?
Aside from the discrepancy observed in the amount of IGR claimed by Tinubu and his allies, the data shows that the average monthly earnings of Lagos in 1999 was over N1 billion, and not N500 million, N600 million or N700 million as claimed by Tinubu and his team.
Data from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) statistical bulletin, as quoted by the journal published in the Research Academy of Social Sciences showed that Lagos generated N14.6 billion in 1999. This amounts to an average of N1.22 billion monthly — double what Tinubu claims.
First reported by TheCable, Lagos IGR when Tinubu left office in 2007 had significantly increased to N83.02 billion or a monthly average of N6.9 billion.
While this is indeed a considerable increase in the IGR relative to other states, the data shows that Tinubu’s claim about what Lagos was generating at the time he became governor of the state is false, and contradicts his own commissioner and other allies.
Also, recent IGR data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the 2021 half-year report shows that Lagos generated N267 billion in the first six months of 2021, with a monthly average of N44.5 billion
This shows that the monthly average IGR generated in Lagos is N44.5 billion — not N51 billion as claimed by Tinubu’s running mate.
Leave a Reply