General

I exaggerated — US got out of recession in 2009, says Gbaja

February 28, 2017 4:54 pm

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Femi Gbajabiamila, majority leader of the house of representatives, has described as an exaggeration, his claim that it took President Barack Obama seven years to get the US out of recession.

The lawmaker had said this when he appeared as a guest on Sunday Politics, a programme on Channels Television.

“We were at the rock bottom. If there is anything lower than the bottom, that was where we were. Let me use the United States as an example. When Obama came in, he inherited a recession not as bad as this, and that’s a country that functions,” Gbajabiamila had said.

“The first year, second, third, fourth, fifth year, into the second term, he didn’t recover – sixth year, it was perhaps a year to the end of his second term, that the United States started getting out of its recession.

TheCable checked Gbajabiamila’s claim, and concluded that it was false, a position, the learned lawmaker eventually accepted.

Explaining himself, the lawmaker said he only employed the use of hyperbole to drive home his point, and that the US technically got out of recession in 2009, but did not recover until 2014.

He said this in a series of tweets.

Whilst recession technically ended in US in 2009 recovery was slow. unemployment poverty was still at record high n household income

— Femi Gbajabiamila (@femigbaja) February 27, 2017

At a record low. It wasn't until 2013 that there was an uptick in the economy. So really and truly Obama was in his 2nd term when things
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— Femi Gbajabiamila (@femigbaja) February 27, 2017

Began to turn around. So tech and by definition US came out of recession in 2009 but recovery was not until 2014.

— Femi Gbajabiamila (@femigbaja) February 27, 2017
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