A Report has negated the allegation by officials of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that Lagos State is the third-largest economy in Africa.
The claim took a life of its own after an influential ex-governor of the state, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was nominated as the APC’s candidate for the presidential election set for February 2023.
His running mate, Kashim Shettima, made the same assertion at a recent lawyers’ conference.
But AFP Fact Check found this to be false: official data shows that, though the state is Nigeria’s biggest economy, it is not among the top five economies on the continent.
Formerly the seat of the government, Lagos is Nigeria’s economic capital. It tops the list of the best African cities for tech startups and is home to Nigeria’s busiest seaport and the country offices of tech giants like Google and Microsoft.
“Lagos is the third largest economy in Africa,” Shettima said at the annual general meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association in Lagos on August 22, 2022.
He made the comments while listing Tinubu’s achievements when he was state governor between 1999 and 2007.
Festus Keyamo, the spokesman for Tinubu’s election campaign and Nigeria’s junior minister for labour and employment, made the same claimduring an interview with Nigerian broadcaster Arise TV in early August.
Lagos state is Nigeria’s biggest economy and was responsible for 15.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2021.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the state had the highest internally generated revenue (IGR) in 2020, with 419 billion naira (US$1.1 billion at the time) collected in taxes and dues. That amount is more than triple the revenue of the second-best state, Rivers, which collected 118 billion naira during the same period.
Meanwhile, NBS’ half-year report for 2021 revealed that Lagos collected some 267 billion naira in taxes — more than triple the 69 billion naira reaped by Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja.
