FACT CHECK: How accurate are the claims El-Rufai made during his Channels TV interview?

The governor of Kaduna, Nasir el-Rufai, recently spoke with Channels TV and made a number of assertions about his state and Nigeria.

Here is what Middle Belt Times discovered after investigating some of the claims.

CLAIM 1: “The local government of Kubau is bigger than the state of Anambra.”

FALSE: Kaduna’s Kubau local government covers 2,363 km2, whilst Anambra covers 4,865 km2 according to the city population website.

CLAIM 2: “Legislative members are permitted to operate their own businesses.”

FALSE: Except for farming, which is primarily done to promote agriculture, full-time public servants are not authorized by law to own or operate private companies, trades, or professions..

CLAIM 3: “The size of Borno State is four times that of the five South-Eastern States.”

FALSE: Borno is not four times as large as the five south-eastern states combined in terms of land mass as el-Rufai claimed, but rather only 2.5 times as large.

Borno is the second-largest state in Nigeria after Niger based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), with a size of 72,609 square kilometers. While all five south eastern states have a combined surface area of 28,987sqkm