By Pamela Ephraim

A FORMER Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Chukwuma Soludo, during the Anambra State Governorship Debate on Monday, said the state had the lowest unemployment and underemployment rates in Nigeria.

Soludu, who is candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the election slated for November 6, said: “Anambra State has the lowest unemployment of any state in Nigeria at 13 per cent and Anambra State has the lowest under-employment rate at 17 per cent of any state in Nigeria.”

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He credited the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as his source.

The claims

Anambra State has the lowest unemployment in Nigeria at 13 per cent as well as the lowest under-employment rate at 17 per cent in Nigeria.

The Findings

Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claims are misleading because Soludo made reference to an old set of data.

The data he referenced were from the second quarter (Q2) of 2020.

The  2020 Q2 data showed that Anambra had the lowest of unemployment rate at 13.1 per cent and also the lowest underemployment rate at 17 per cent.

However, the NBS later released the Q4 of 2020 job statistics.

In the Q4 data, Anambra’s unemployment rate was 44.23 per cent while the underemployment rate was 16.48 per cent.

Furthermore, Anambra was not the lowest as Osun had 11.65 per cent unemployment rate, while Lagos had 4.52 per cent underemployment rate.

THE VERDICT

The claims made by Soludo at the gubernatorial debate that Anambra had the lowest unemployment rate at 13 per cent and the lowest underemployment rate at 17 per cent  were misleading.

EDITORS NOTE:

The verdict was updated from true to misleading.

The report was updated  with NBS Q4 2020 data.