Is it so bad in Nigeria’s north-east that almost all children under 5 have died? (NYT Fact Check)

[Rion]

The terror group Boko Haram has put Nigeria on the world map for the wrong reasons. The group’s atrocities range from the abduction of 200 school girls in Chibok in 2014 to suicide bombings and the large scale displacement of residents in the country’s north-east.
Women and children are often caught in the insurgency’s crossfire. In a tweet, the New York Times drew attention to an article about their suffering.
It stated: “The humanitarian crisis in north-eastern Nigeria is so bad that almost all children under 5 have died.”
Could an entire population category really have been wiped out?

...

At the end of last year, the International Organisation for Migration counted 1,770,444 internally displaced persons in 106 of the 112 local governments they were able to access in the north-east region. Close to a quarter of the displaced population were kids below 5.
For the New York Times’ tweet to be true, millions of children therefore had to have died. This is incorrect, as we will set out below.

Is it so bad in Nigeria's north-east that almost all children under 5 have died? | Africa Check

 

[timewerx]

Ironically, Nigeria is one of Africa's most economically progressive nation in Africa due to its oil. In fact, it has higher GDP than many Western nations.

It goes to say, some people doesn't know how to handle wealth and power.

 

[Muslim-UK]

The article is fake news, just click the link and look right :/

 

[TLK Valentine]

Perhaps someday people will actually read articles before dismissing them as "fake news"?

The article quotes sources -- if the sources are wrong, the article isn't fake.

Doctors Without Borders reported that the children are missing. take it up with them.

 

[Moral Orel]

The tweet is wrong, the article is not. Don't get your news from Twitter, folks.

 

[Rion]

The article is fake news, just click the link and look right :/

They're rating the NYT article incorrect.

Perhaps someday people will actually read articles before dismissing them as "fake news"?

The article quotes sources -- if the sources are wrong, the article isn't fake.

Doctors Without Borders reported that the children are missing. take it up with them.

Are you making a promise? That'd be appreciated so much.

FYI:

The New York Times tweeted that “almost all” children younger than five in north-eastern Nigeria have died due to the humanitarian emergency caused by the Boko Haram terrorist group.

But the claim is incorrect for several reasons. First, it contradicts the article itself, which stated that it only appeared to be the case in Borno state, one of the 6 states that make up Nigeria’s north-east region.

Secondly, at the end of last year the International Organisation for Migration counted about 467,000 children younger than 5 in camps for displaced people alone. Also, the limited data available on deaths in children under 5 does not back up a near wipe-out of this age group.

This is how fake news is created, sensational headlines or ads/links for articles, which is what many people assume to be factual and move on with.

 

[TLK Valentine]

They're rating the NYT article incorrect.



Are you making a promise? That'd be appreciated so much.

FYI:



This is how fake news is created, sensational headlines or ads/links for articles, which is what many people assume to be factual and move on with.

Sounds like "Fake News" is the result of lazy readers.

 

[Moral Orel]

They're rating the NYT article incorrect.

No, they're rating the tweet incorrect. The article does not make the claim that the tweet does.

 

[TLK Valentine]

No, they're rating the tweet incorrect. The article does not make the claim that the tweet does.

People who depend on Twitter should keep their expectations low.

 

[Rion]

No, they're rating the tweet incorrect. The article does not make the claim that the tweet does.

They also discuss the article

Secondly, reporter Donald McNeil jr. cited “aid agencies” as the source of his claim, specifically Médecins Sans Frontières. (Note: McNeil did not respond to an Africa Check email asking who the other agencies were.)

Unless you think they're asking for their source of the tweet.

 

[DaisyDay]

Is it so bad in Nigeria's north-east that almost all children under 5 have died? | Africa Check

Yes, the tweet was an exaggeration.

 

[Moral Orel]

They also discuss the article

Yes they do, when they agree with me here:

To start with, the New York Times article stated that it “appears” that all children under five in “Nigeria’s Borno state” have died. This immediately contradicts the Times’ tweet that “almost all children under 5 [in north-eastern Nigeria] have died”.

Unless you think they're asking for their source of the tweet.

Who cares who the source of the tweet was? The sources in the article were clearly named. They specifically cited Dr. Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders, and Dr. Natalie Roberts, an emergency operations manager, who said:

There are almost always small children buzzing around the camps... We saw only older brothers and sisters. No toddlers straddling their big sisters’ hips, no babies strapped to their mothers’ backs.

So the tweet was wrong, and the article was well-written, accurate, and well-sourced.

 

[Vylo]

Ironically, Nigeria is one of Africa's most economically progressive nation in Africa due to its oil. In fact, it has higher GDP than many Western nations.

It goes to say, some people doesn't know how to handle wealth and power.

While nigera ranks 23rd in GDP, it ranks 131st in GDP per capita. They aren't very wealthy, the just have a lot of people. Even the congo has more per capita than them. They have one of the lowest standards of living in the world ranking 152nd in HDI.

To give you an idea they have less than 1/10th our population. Africa's highest GDP per capitaactually is Libya, of all places, with nearly 3 times that of Nigera. They and Algeria are the only 2 countries on that continent that rank "high" on the HDI scale. There is only one nation that does not rank high in Europe, Belarus.