Posts mislead with claims of Nigeria's southeast being excluded from development projects

AFP

23-06-2025

'Student Loan excluded South East, Jamb failed South East, Sea port, none in South East, NNPC/FIRS/Customs none from South East, Int'l Airport none in South East, Railway none in South East, Military checkpoints, everywhere in South East,' reads a post shared more than 900 times on Facebook.
'When they cry, you call them IPOB,' concludes the post, published on May 19, 2025.
The post was shared by a page belonging to Nigerian singer Charles Oputa, popularly known as 'Charly Boy', to his 180,000 followers.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked claims by Charly Boy (here, here, here and here).
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Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post, taken on June 16, 2025
Nigeria's southeast comprises the states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
A previous unilateral declaration of independence in the region and the creation of the republic of Biafra in 1967 led to a 30-month civil war that claimed more than one million lives, most of them Igbos, from the effects of conflict, starvation and disease.
In 2015, renewed protests for Biafran independence re-emerged after decades, with Nnamdi Kanu as a leading figure. He was arrested in Kenya and extradited to Nigeria on June 27, 2021. He faces charges related to treason (archived here).
His trial began afresh on March 21, 2025, after the former judge recused herself (archived here).
However, the posts claim that the region has been excluded from infrastructural and development projects is misleading.
Loan programme
The claim that the southeast region was excluded from a national student loan programme is false.
The programme was introduced by the Bola Tinubu administration in May 2024 to encourage more people to pursue higher education (archived here). As of May 2025, the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) said it had received over a million loan applications for tuition and upkeep from about 629,000 students (archived here).
Data published by the fund showed that a little more than 40,000 students from the southeast had submitted over 57,000 loan applications.
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Screenshot of the loan disbursement dashboard taken on June 18, 2025
JAMB failure
The claim about JAMB failure refers to the entry examination taken by teenagers who want to pursue tertiary education. The exam, Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), is coordinated by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
JAMB reported mass failure in the 2025 edition of the examination, where 78% of the candidates scored less than 200 out of the maximum 400 points (archived here).
The failure was later attributed to a technical glitch that affected students in the Lagos and southeast zones. About 206,000 students were affected in Lagos and 173,387 students were affected in the southeast zone (archived here). So this claim is true, though not limited to the southeast.
Seaport
The claim that there is no seaport in the southeast region of Nigeria is correct.
Nigeria currently has seven seaports, which are all located in the southwest and south-south regions due to their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean (archived here). The southeast region, meanwhile, has rivers that run into the ocean but no coastal land.
However, the Onitsha River Port – while not a seaport – is located in Anambra state in southeast Nigeria. The river port has reported receiving barges and containers in recent years (archived here and here). There is also an inland dry port under construction in Aba, Abia state (archived here).
Inclusion in agencies
The claim that there is no one from the southeast region in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigerian Customs Service is misleading.
Although the heads of these agencies are not from the southeast, there are other people from the southeast in top positions at these agencies, including the vice president of business services at the NNPCL (archived here).
The FIRS Act also mandates that the management team must have a representative from each geopolitical zone, one of which is the southeast (archived here). This rule also applies to the Nigeria Customs Service (archived here).
International airport
The claim about the absence of an international airport in the southeast is false. The Akanu Ibiam International Airport is located in Enugu (archived here). However, the airports in Lagos and Abuja enjoy more passenger traffic (archived here).
Railways
The claim that there are no rail lines in the southeast region is false. In November 2024, the government completed and handed over the Port Harcourt-Aba Railway to the Nigeria Railway Corporation to start operations (archived here).
In December 2024, the NRC said the trains transport between 500 and 900 passengers per trip (archived here).
Military checkpoints
The claim that military checkpoints are common in the southeast is true. Due to insecurity (archived here), Mohammed Abubakar, the minister of defence, last year pledged to ramp up security measures in the region with the stated aim of ensuring stability for businesses (archived here).
Military checkpoints are also common in the northern region due to efforts to flush out armed groups like Boko Haram and conflicts between Fulani herders and farmers that have resulted in significant casualties (archived here).