Nigeria not fourth consumer of sugary drinks

Claim: A Twitter user recently claimed that Nigeria is the fourth country with the highest consumers of sugary drinks in the world.

Verdict: The claim is false. There is no available data to back the claim and the mention of the claim was only made in a news media report promoting an event in 2017.

Background

A Twitter user @eadewunmi claimed that Nigeria’s consumption of sugary drinks is the fourth in the world.

The conversation emanated over the appointment of a Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Taiwo Oyedele, as the chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms.

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Adewunmi in a tweet had expressed worry over Taiwo’s appointment by the president due to PWC notoriously known to influence taxes for its clients in some countries it operates.

While using Taiwo’s opposition to the N10 per litre on all non-alcoholic, carbonated, and sweetened beverages introduced and later suspended by the federal government, Adewunmi allegedly said it showed he was a lobbyist for the manufacturers, whose appointment would also affect the tax.

The tax which is also known as the SSB tax was introduced by the former President Muhammadu Buhari with the aim to raise more revenue for the government and contain the effects of sugar consumption on the population.

While supporters of the tax stated that it would enable the country to reduce the number of people diagnosed with diabetes and obesity, its opponent viewed it as an unjust policy with the potential of job loss in the manufacturing sector.

Verification

A Google internet search on Nigeria being the fourth consumer of sugary drinks brought out news reports by the Punch and Daily Trust Newspapers.

The report quoted the Head of Market Development, German Engineering Federation, Mrs Martina Claus, that Nigeria ranked fourth globally in the volume of soft drink sales recorded in 2016.

Claus was speaking on the sidelines of the third International Trade Exhibition on Agrofood, Plastics, Printing and Packaging in Lagos in 2017.

She said that the statistics on soft drinks sales were sourced from the Euromonitor International, a global market intelligence publisher, also showed that 38.68 million litres of soft drinks were sold in Nigeria in 2016.

She had also added that Nigeria was behind the United States of America (USA), China and Mexico.

But a search on Google using the keywords ‘Countries with the highest consumption of soft drinks in the world’ brought out statistics made using per capita indices.

For instance, a report on the website of the World Economic Forum which was published in 2015 stated that a study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, found out that America is no longer the biggest consumer of sugary drinks.

The study showed that Chile was the biggest consumer of sugary drinks, with an average of 190 calories sold per person per day.

It stated that the report authors, Barry Popkin and Corinna Hawkes, compiled sales data from Euromonitor to look at global consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages with Mexico, United States, Argentina and Saudi Arabia featured in the top five.

Similarly, a compilation of the first five largest consumers of sugary drinks by World Population Review listed Argentina, The United States, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and Belgium as the largest consumers of the product.

Another article published by Yahoo finance, which presented countries with highest soda consumption per capita while collecting data from reliable sources such as Trade Exports, and 2021 Ahfes Project report, among others, showed Nigeria was not on the list.

The report which it said used help from aggregators like Statista to carry, said the ranking was based on data available from 2017-2022 for different countries.

The report stated its “methodology for ranking the countries with the highest soda consumption per capita involved collecting data from reliable sources such as Trade Exports, and 2021 Ahfes Project report, among others.”

“We’ve also taken help from aggregators like Statista for our research. We’ve ranked countries on per capita annual soda consumption based on data available from 2017-2022 for different countries.”

It listed the countries as; Hungary, 310.3 litres per capita followed by Argentina 155 litres, the United States 154 litres, Chile 141 litres, Mexico 137 litres, Germany 120 litres, Uruguay 113 litres, United Kingdom 105 litres and Norway 98 litres.

Others include Saudi Arabia 89 litres, Bolivia 89 litres, Russia 66.43 litres, France 62.4 litres, Brazil 59.5 litres, Canada 50.8 litres, Italy 50.1 litres, Spain39.2 litres, Japan 30 litres and Indonesia 23 litres.

Conclusion

Available data obtained by Daily Trust on Sunday does not show Nigeria is among the countries with the top 5 consumers of sugary drinks. The related event that points to the claim was a statement that does not have the backing of any data. As such, the claim is false.

This Explainer is produced in partnership with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD)