Nigeria's Vice President Yemi Osinbajo ( AFP / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI)

Nigerian vice president overstates the comparative size of Borno state

This article is more than one year old.
Published on September 2, 2022 at 11:05
2 min read
By Tonye BAKARE, AFP Nigeria

With a land area of 72,609 km², Borno is Nigeria’s largest state. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently claimed in a press release describing his meeting with visiting students from Harvard Business School that Borno is bigger than the “United Kingdom plus Sweden or Denmark”. But this is exaggerated; the United Kingdom alone is much bigger than Borno, as is Sweden. Only Denmark is smaller.

Borno state is the epicentre of one of Nigeria’s most pressing security challenges – a decade-long battle against jihadists in the country’s northeast region.

In a meeting with Harvard Business School students, which was relayed in a press release published on Osinbajo’s official website on August 28, 2022, and reprinted by several Nigerian news outlets, he said the country’s security problems could better be appreciated when considering its size.

“For instance, Borno State is about the size of the whole of the United Kingdom plus Sweden or Denmark (sic),” the press release quotes Osinbajo as saying.

“So, when it is reported that there is violence in Nigeria, it is probably an incident in one remote area of the country, and many people in Abuja and Lagos may hear about it on social media, such is the size of this country.”

Osinbajo went on to say that Nigeria could not be compared with smaller African neighbours owing to the size of its economy.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy and the 13th largest on the continent in terms of land area, according to World Bank data.

But Osinbajo’s claim about the size of Borno is false.

Smaller than UK or Sweden

Figures from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that Borno state has a land area of 72,609 km².

A screenshot of the data on land areas of Nigerian states published by NBS, taken September 1, 2022

However, World Bank data shows that both the United Kingdom and Sweden are much bigger than Borno.

The land area of the United Kingdom – comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland – is 241,930 km², more than triple the size of Borno. At 407,310 km², Sweden is even bigger.

The state, however, is almost double the size of Denmark, which the World Bank puts at 40,000 km².

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