Looking at Okonjo-Iweala's 40 million car owners claim

I wrote this article for The Scoop and it was published on November 5, 2014. See here


So this morning I read a statement credited to the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, that 40 million Nigerians are now comfortable enough to have cars due to ‘concrete steps’ taken by the government. She was speaking in Abuja at the Presidential Public Affairs Forum organized by the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Doyin Okupe.


You see, it’s the norm for government officials to throw around barely plausible figures so long as they are not challenged by citizens. The Nigerian government has perfected this act – the more scary the figure is, the more comfortable the government is to use it. I was a little idle this morning so I thought to test the accuracy of this figure before it becomes another ‘notorious fact’ (word credit: Pastor Wendell Simlin, a.k.a Reno Omokri).


I googled “Nigeria population by age” and got this Nigeria age structure on indexmundi.com (link here http://www.indexmundi.com/nigeria/age_structure.html).
According to the site’s 2014 estimate, Nigeria’s population is divided into the following age brackets: 

Age distribution	Male	Female	Total
0-14	39,151,304	37,353,737	76,505,041
15-24	17,486,117	16,732,533	34,218,650
25-54	27,697,644	26,285,816	53,983,460
55-64	3,393,631	3,571,301	6,964,932
>65	2,621,845	2,861,826	5,483,671
	90,350,541	86,805,213	177,155,754

 

I made a little guess on what percentage of each age category is comfortable enough to own a car (strictly my own rude, unscientific guess) and got these results:

 

Age distribution	Total	% car ownership	Number
0-14	76,505,041	0%	-
15-24	34,218,650	10%	3,421,865
25-54	53,983,460	30%	16,195,038
55-64	6,964,932	30%	2,089,480
>65	5,483,671	20%	1,096,734
	177,155,754		22,803,117

Let’s say 25 million, and I have tried to look at the best case scenario based on what I believe is the condition in Lagos. I expect other states to have worse car ownership figures. 


I have no doubt in my mind that the 40 million figure given by the honourable minister is a very wild guesstimate. As I pointed out before, this is no scientific work, and is therefore open to corrections and better insights. But we need to start asking questions of public officials who are becoming too comfortable making rather wild claims, especially since mainstream journalists do not seem to realize it is their duty to so do. 


Questions will be asked as to whether car ownership should form the basis of gauging improvement in economic situation, but I suppose that is neither here nor there. I remember former President Obasanjo saying  the manner Nigerians lavished money on owambe (parties) and used bottled water was an indication that Nigerians could pay more for fuel. Personally, I think more Nigerians now have cars compared to a few years ago, but I do not think it is due to any ‘concrete steps’ taken by the government. I don’t even know why the minister wants to take credit for more Nigerians buying more of Tokunbo cars anyway.