A video that has spread across X since Tuesday says Nigeria’s ruling party would rather buy luxury SUVs than house its police officers. Several of its figures check out against public records. The two that carry the most weight, the price of a Prado and what a vote is worth, have nothing behind them that MoreBranches could find. And the yacht, its most quotable number, leaves out that lawmakers took the money out of the budget.
The 2 minute 27 second film was posted by @publikphigor, has pulled 174,800 views, and is AI-generated. It follows a police officer from a checkpoint to a barracks with a leaking roof, then ends with a call to download the SmartBallot app and organise for the NDC. His replies tie the project to Peter Obi. It is campaign material, and it is built like it.
The claim it hangs on is the Prados. According to the video, the APC’s national youth leader posted a clip on 25 October of brand new Prados for youth leaders, then deleted it, and each one cost ₦160 million at the dealer. On 27 October, Legit.ng reported that the Forum of State Youth Leaders of the APC called the SUV reports false and said no member in any of the 36 states or the FCT had received a vehicle. The forum asked Dayo Israel, the party’s national youth leader, to explain. The model, the number of vehicles and the price are all unconfirmed, and MoreBranches found no independent price for a Prado in Nigeria.
The budget does carry vehicles, though. The 2026 budget sets aside ₦11.25 billion for presidential vehicles, up 135 per cent from under ₦5 billion a year earlier, and ₦11.23 billion for vehicle procurement at the State House headquarters, according to the Guardian. Separately, the accountability group Tracka found ₦15.13 billion for 39 SUVs in the same budget, about ₦387 million each, and Atiku Abubakar demanded the chassis numbers on 30 July. Those are budget lines, not confirmed purchases, and nothing ties them to the youth leaders’ vehicles.
From there the video does arithmetic. A voter is paid ₦5,000, it says, so one Prado would buy 32,000 votes. The division is correct. But it rests on a price for the car and a price for the vote, and the video gives evidence for neither.
The yacht is different, because the number is real and the story around it is incomplete. A ₦5 billion line for a presidential yacht did appear in the 2023 supplementary budget. The House of Representatives then removed it and moved the money to the Students Loan Scheme, with Appropriations Committee chairman Abubakar Bichi saying the yacht was no longer in the budget. The presidency also said Tinubu never asked for one.
The video says that money would have covered a year’s pay for more than 4,000 police officers. It understates it. On the police’s 2022 salary scale, a Police Constable II earns between ₦68,262 and ₦75,224 a month, according to Dubawa, which means ₦5 billion would cover roughly 5,500 to 6,100 constables for a year. Dubawa also noted it is unclear whether officers are paid exactly as the chart says. The video’s claim that officers earn under ₦100,000 is on solid ground on paper, next to a minimum wage of ₦70,000 since July 2024.
The housing numbers hold up. The Vice President’s Abuja residence was first awarded in 2010 at about ₦7 billion, and Nyesom Wike put the contract value at ₦21 billion in January 2024, the year it was commissioned. Reports say Kashim Shettima still lives at Akinola Aguda House in the Presidential Complex. On the police, Inspector-General Kayode Egbetokun told a housing summit in Abuja in April 2024 that the force can house about 10 per cent of its need, for more than 400,000 officers.
The health figures are more solid than the political ones. The claim that resident doctors’ basic pay has gone 16 years without review comes from the doctors themselves: the president of the Nigeria Association of Resident Doctors, Mohammad Suleiman, said so in October 2025, and MoreBranches could not confirm it independently. Health got ₦2.48 trillion of the ₦58.47 trillion proposed 2026 budget, or 4.2 per cent, against the 15 per cent Nigeria committed to in the Abuja Declaration. UCH Ibadan spent 17 days without power in November 2024 while patients protested, and IBEDC said it cut supply over a debt of about ₦400 million. In February, reports still put the country at about 10 radiotherapy machines for more than 200 million people.
