Yahya Quadri
Claim:
“Osun remains the most peaceful state in Nigeria today,” – Gboyega Oyetola, Osun state Governor, July 11, 2022.
Conclusion:
The rankings quoted by the Osun state Governor are not recent data. The ranking was from a report by The Foundation of Peace Professionals (FPP) with data gathered between 2010 to 2016 and published in 2018 and there are no recent resource that backs that claim.
Full report:
Ahead of the July 16, 2022 Governorship election, the top five candidates in the race were invited for a debate by Channels TV. This debate is to bring the aspirants closer to the people and help them make better decisions at the poll.
Those presents for the debate include; Governor Adegboyega Oyetola of the All Progressive Congress; Akin Ogunbiyi of Accord Party; Ademola Adeleke of the People’s Democratic Party; Goke Omigbodun of the Social Democratic Party and Labour Party’s Lasun Yusuf.
Meanwhile, answering questions on the state of insecurity in the face of the country, the incumbent Governor maintained that Osun is the most peaceful state in Nigeria.
Verification:
Searching through verifiable platform like Amnesty international, Nigeria Bureau of Statistics NBS and further keyword search online for reports relating to this claim proved abortive as there was no recent report backing up this claim, hence limiting the source of the claim to The Foundation of Peace Professionals (FPP) Crime report published in 2018.
context
The Foundation of Peace Professionals (FPP) published its last crime report in 2018 where it ranked Osun state as the most peaceful in the southwest region.
The peace ranking among States was done using five broad indicators. According to the foundation, the indicators adopted for the Peace Index include; Level of Poverty, Crime Rate, Level of Education, Rate of Human Rights Abuses, and Level of Incarceration.
The data was collected between 2010-2016 and to date, no other report has been released.
We understand that the validity of some of these data are often between 5 years span, but considering the fact that the said report contains data gathered between 2010 to 2016, stating such claim as a fact in 2022 might be out of place considering the realities on ground with various reports of bandits, herders and kidnappers infiltration of the state and facing off with the local security apparatus Amotekun on several occasions.
Meanwhile, the lack of up-to-date data to do a proper analysis of the Nigerian political and economic situation has made it difficult to measure our level of development, especially the crime rates in the country. Nonetheless, in the face of the present tremendous challenges, it might be wrong to still maintain that Osun is the safest in the Southwest region.