Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, with me Tim Harford, with

a programme that scrutinises statistics all over the globe and this week we're starting

in Nigeria. Recently the social media giant Twitter found itself in the middle of a political

storm in the country, it removed a tweet by the President, Mohamedu Bihari, commenting

on unrest in the country, claiming that the post violated Twitter's rules. The Nigerian

government responded by banning Twitter entirely. Twitter has long been politically sensitive

in Nigeria. Last year Twitter played an important role in accelerating the so-called end-sars

protests, a powerful movement channeling frustration at perceived police and government corruption.

This Twitter ban has been a big story and lots of the international media have picked up

on it and one figure has been very widely reported that there are 40 million Twitter users in Nigeria.

But how accurate is this number? We spoke to Allwell O'Cree, a researcher at the fact-checking

organisation, Africa Check. Well, in middle of less I saw the number, it seemed outrageous

to me considering the demographed Nigeria, considering access to internet and also the fact

that Twitter is not probably in the top three social media platforms used in the country.

So Allwell decided to investigate. He found that the estimate came from some recent polling.

It was a survey in which the poster phoned a thousand phoned-on-in Nigerians who are 18

years older. One of the questions that asked about Twitter is, do you have a Twitter account?

And 20% of the respondents said yes. That 20% was then applied to the population estimate

which was about 198 million. During that month, it comes to 39.6 million.

39.6 million Twitter users or rounding up the 40 million number mentioned in all the reporting,

except there's a problem here.

The sample says 18 years and older and then the percentage was applied to the entire population.

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