Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was off by roughly 257,000 square miles when he claimed on Sunday that Nigeria’s Borno State was about the same size as the combination of some major European countries, seeking to justify the administration’s failure to curb insecurity with the country’s vast geographical size.

“Borno State is about the size of the whole of the United Kingdom plus Sweden or Denmark,” Mr Osinbajo said while meeting a group of students from Harvard University in Abuja. “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.”

Mr Osinbajo’s claim was false. Sweden alone, at 173,000 square miles, is about six times the size of Borno, which is roughly 27,000 square miles. The United Kingdom, at roughly 94,000 square miles per the same Worldometer, is also more than three times the size of Borno.

Borno is, however, just shy of being twice the size of Denmark, which has a land mass of less than 17,000 square miles, per Worldometer.

Mr Osinbajo has repeatedly cited false statistics to excuse Nigeria’s social and economic failures under the Buhari regime. Millions of Nigerians have been plunged into poverty in Mr Osinbajo’s government, with Nigeria surpassing India as the country with the highest number of poor people.

Mr Osinbajo’s false claim as contained in a statement issued today by his office is...

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