By Pascal Ibe

Introduction

“This is the reason why that girl addressed you as Tony. The truth remains that all you said are lies, and where did you get those statistics from, Mr Tony?

Take it from me, Tony, you’re cornified and nothing like truth can ever emerge from a corn camp.”

“I’m beginning to think the girl matter is a stunt to push this statement he’s making; you don’t know how heavily propagandist the current government is!

“Don’t mind Mr TOE! Ride on, you’re not the first..Nigerians will be set free!”

These are the comments of criticism that followed a trending video where billionaire businessman, Tomy Elumelu claimed that the crude oil production in Nigeria has increased by 90 per cent.

Elumelu has been in the news and in Nigeria’s social media space since 21 August after the video of him correcting his employee for addressing him as “Tony” emerged.

FACTWATCH Nigeria later ran a fact check on a viral claim related to the incident.

Claim

In the now-viral video, Elumelu said partly, “I am not a politician so I will say the truth as it is. Before 2023, we were producing and losing 97% of our oil production. Today, we get 98%.” 

The video, which has been published across the major social media platforms in Nigeria since 23 August, continues to generate criticisms and doubts among Nigerians.

Instablog, Nigeria Stories and many other blog pages posted the video here, here and here.

The video also appeared on Facebook and Instagram here and here.

However, these pages did not state when the clip emerged. However, comments under the video suggested that people had already believed that the comment from Elumelu was recent.

Verification

FACTWATCH Nigeria traced the video to the X account of  @abdullahayofe, a supporter of President Bola Tinubu, who first posted the video on his X page on 27 July 2025.

We understand that the video began to trend again after @abdullahayofe reposted the video clip on Sunday, 23 August.

To authenticate that the video of Elumelu making the comments was from 2025,  FACTWATCH Nigeria did a simple keyword search on Google and discovered that the clip was from last year.

Viable TV, the source from which the trending video emerged, uploaded the same video on its YouTube page in July 2025.

A few news websites in Nigeria published a report relating to the video in July 2025 here and here.

What about Elumelu’s claim?

On whether crude oil production increased by 90 per cent since 2023 as claimed by Elumelu, data released by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) in July showed that average crude oil production, excluding condensates, increased to 1.56 million barrels per day in June from 1.53 million barrels per day in May.

NUPRC said Nigeria’s average daily crude oil and condensate production rose by 2.3 per cent to 1.74 million barrels per day (mbpd) in June 2026 from 1.70mbpd recorded in May, while crude oil output climbed to 1.56mbpd, enabling the country to exceed its Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) production quota for the second consecutive month.

Verdict

What Elumelu said in the video is partly true, but the recirculation of the video clip itself, which has brought suggestions that it was recent, is MISLEADING.

Findings indicated that Elumelu made the comments last year and not recently.