CLAIM: Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa state, in a recent interview, claimed that the population of Saudi Arabia is not up to ten per cent of Nigeria’s.
Governor Sule made the claim while appearing on a Channels TV programme. The governor was on the programme to discuss the discovery and prospective exploration of oil in his state.
When asked to what extent the citizens of Nasarawa state will benefit from the oil, the governor said. “Just because you have an oil discovery doesn’t mean that everybody in the state will be employed.
It doesn’t work that way; not even in Saudi Arabia where they’re producing about 7 million barrels per day. Not everybody is employed and they don’t have 10 percent of the population of Nigeria,”
VERDICT: FALSE
Reliable data from the World Bank and the World Population Review put the population of Saudi Arabia between 34 to 36 million people in 2022, while the same data put Nigeria’s population between 200 to 220 million people. Ten percent of 200 million is 20 million.
