A week ago, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that “thanks to the reforms [of his government], our country attracted foreign direct investments worth more than $30b in the last year.”
The wording of this claim has gotten Tinubu in trouble with local media, as journalists have taken to investigating Nigeria’s actual FDI intake and say Tinubu made a false statement. The Foundation for Investigative Journalism, a Nigerian non-profit organisation, found that this figure represented commitments which will take years to materialise if they do at all. Other news outlets supported this conclusion as well.
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The figure had been used by government officials before as a marker of Tinubu’s administration’s success. During a leadership conference in March, Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris said “Since [Tinubu’s administration] assumed office in May 2023, we have attracted $30b in FDI commitments into the real sectors of the economy, including manufacturing, telecoms, healthcare, oil and gas, and others.”
A month earlier, in February, Minister of Industry Trade and Investment Doris Uzoka-Anite also mentioned the FDI commitments but added that they would take five to eight years to materialise.
FIJ also reviewed figures from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics outlining the country’s actual FDI inflows.
They found that in the second quarter of 2024, FDI intakes were the lowest since the NBS started gathering data, at $29.83m.
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By GlobalDataThe FIJ finds that “Nigeria has been on a downward FDI trend since the third quarter of 2023.” It started 2023 with a low intake, with $47m in Q1 and finished strong with $187 in Q4. The peak seemed to be temporary, as it dropped to $118m in Q1 of 2024 and even lower in Q2.
Other local media outlets have highlighted the point of view that Tinubu’s comment didn’t explicitly say he was talking about secured investments. In a piece for the Nigerian Vanguard news website, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity Temitope Ajayi said “it is important to emphasise that attracting local and foreign investments does not mean immediate cash inflow into the economy.”
