{"id":14293,"date":"2023-03-28T14:20:03","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T13:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=14293"},"modified":"2023-03-28T14:20:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T13:20:05","slug":"how-twitter-user-changed-figures-announced-by-inec-to-spread-fake-news-on-adamawa-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/how-twitter-user-changed-figures-announced-by-inec-to-spread-fake-news-on-adamawa-election\/","title":{"rendered":"How Twitter user changed figures announced by INEC to spread fake news on Adamawa election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Using fake results online, social media users spread posts that the All Progressive Congress (APC) party candidate, Aishatu Dahiru, popularly called Binani, has won the Adamawa state governorship election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The governorship and state assembly elections were held on Saturday in the northeastern state. As voting ended, the sorting and collation of results commenced immediately. Results were announced at polling units, after which they were collated and announced at wards. The results were further collated from the ward collation centres for each local government across the state and finally at the state collation centre in Yola, the capital of Adamawa state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">By Sunday morning, the state collation centre was opened to receive and announce results from the 21 local governments in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The state has 2,186,465 registered voters, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Fourteen candidates contested for the governorship of the state. The major candidates in the race are incumbent governor Ahmadu Fintiri, seeking re-election under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Aishatu Dahiru, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.premiumtimesng.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Premium Times<\/a> in partnership with the <a href=\"https:\/\/thecjid.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development<\/a> (CJID), reported live updates of results announced by the electoral commission. By Sunday night, INEC had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.premiumtimesng.com\/news\/headlines\/588685-adamawa-governorship-final-results-from-inecs-state-collation-centre-live-updates.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced<\/a> results from 18 out of 21 local government areas of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">However, as the commission paused the collation and went on break, a Twitter account named \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Binani4Governor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Binani4Governor<\/a>\u201d manufactured results and shared in a tweet that Ms Binani had won the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The user <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Binani4Governor\/status\/1637499109891362819?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shared<\/a> a picture with the results of the 21 local governments declaring that Ms Binani had won the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAPC has just delivered the first female governor in Nigeria! You can\u2019t write off an entire party as evil! This is the party I support! To think it came from the North,\u201d a Twitter user Jay (@<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Iambobjay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Iambobjay) replied under the tweet.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The tweet would soon go viral on social media, with many people engaging the tweet massively. Several people began to rejoice with Ms Binani as Nigeria\u2019s first female elected governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">In less than 24 hours, at least 4,411 Twitter users have liked the tweet, and 1,166 retweeted, while 441,000 generally viewed the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Then, popular activist and social media influencer JJ Omojuwa <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Omojuwa\/status\/1637511445142274050?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">posted<\/a> on Twitter: \u201cHistory. Nigeria\u2019s 1st elected female governor is on the cards with the election of Senator Aishatu Dahiru, a.k.a. Binani! Congratulations Adamawa.\u201d Mr Omojuwa, who has 1.2 million followers, attached a picture of Ms Binani with his tweet and the caption \u201cMadam Governor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Checks by DUBAWA show that the results shared on Twitter didn\u2019t correspond with official results announced by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.premiumtimesng.com\/news\/headlines\/588685-adamawa-governorship-final-results-from-inecs-state-collation-centre-live-updates.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">INEC and published on PREMIUM TIMES<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">For instance, in Lamurde&#8217;s local government, official results announced by INEC show that APC has 9,376 votes, but results shared on Twitter show that APC got 19,589.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">In Michika, INEC results show that the APC has 15,793, but the tweet said APC won 15,795. Based on official results in Yola South, APC has 32,255, but results shared on Twitter show that APC got 29,040.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Similarly, in Mayo Belwa, the PDP got 20,239 votes according to INEC results, but the numbers on Twitter were cut down to 18,392. DUBAWA analysis shows that Twitter users twisted these numbers to spread fake news.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The only official acceptable results are the ones announced by the electoral commission INEC. The alleged tweet shared fake numbers to show that Ms Binani won the election. The tweet and numbers are changed from what the electoral commission INEC announced at the state collation centre in Yola.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Ahead of the Nigerian elections, there has been an explosion of fake news across social media platforms. Nigerians are now increasingly wary of any content regardless, as different political parties and political actors have unwittingly helped peddle misinformation. Divisive content on religion and ethnicity is also littered across social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The Adamawa governorship election has been declared inconclusive by INEC. Although final results tallied by INEC showed that Mr Fintiri of the PDP scored the highest votes, INEC said the cancelled votes were more than the margin of victory between Mr Fintiri and the runner-up, Ms Dahiru.\u00a0 Therefore, the electoral commission said a new date would be fixed for re-run elections in areas where elections could not be held in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-premium-times-nigeria wp-block-embed-premium-times-nigeria\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps:\/\/www.premiumtimesng.com\/regional\/ssouth-east\/589735-how-twitter-user-changed-figures-announced-by-inec-to-spread-fake-news-on-adamawa-elections.html\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>The researcher produced this explainer per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame Kari Kari fellowship partnership with premium times to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using fake results online, social media users spread posts that the All Progressive Congress (APC) party candidate, Aishatu Dahiru, popularly called Binani, has won the Adamawa state governorship election. The governorship and state assembly elections were held on Saturday in the northeastern state. As voting ended, the sorting and collation of results commenced immediately. Results were announced at polling units, after which they were collated and announced at wards. The results were further collated from the ward collation centres for each local government across the state and finally at the state collation centre in Yola, the capital of Adamawa state. By Sunday morning, the state collation centre was opened to receive and announce results from the 21 local governments in the state. The state has 2,186,465 registered voters, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Fourteen candidates contested for the governorship of the state. The major candidates in the race are incumbent governor Ahmadu Fintiri, seeking re-election under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Aishatu Dahiru, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC). Premium Times in partnership with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), reported live updates of results announced by the electoral commission. By Sunday night, INEC had announced results from 18 out of 21 local government areas of the state. However, as the commission paused the collation and went on break, a Twitter account named \u201cBinani4Governor\u201d manufactured results and shared in a tweet that Ms Binani had won the election. The user shared a picture with the results of the 21 local governments declaring that Ms Binani had won the election. \u201cAPC has just delivered the first female governor in Nigeria! You can\u2019t write off an entire party as evil! This is the party I support! To think it came from the North,\u201d a Twitter user Jay (@Iambobjay) replied under the tweet.\u201d The tweet would soon go viral on social media, with many people engaging the tweet massively. Several people began to rejoice with Ms Binani as Nigeria\u2019s first female elected governor. In less than 24 hours, at least 4,411 Twitter users have liked the tweet, and 1,166 retweeted, while 441,000 generally viewed the post. Then, popular activist and social media influencer JJ Omojuwa posted on Twitter: \u201cHistory. Nigeria\u2019s 1st elected female governor is on the cards with the election of Senator Aishatu Dahiru, a.k.a. Binani! Congratulations Adamawa.\u201d Mr Omojuwa, who has 1.2 million followers, attached a picture of Ms Binani with his tweet and the caption \u201cMadam Governor.\u201d Checks by DUBAWA show that the results shared on Twitter didn\u2019t correspond with official results announced by INEC and published on PREMIUM TIMES. For instance, in Lamurde&#8217;s local government, official results announced by INEC show that APC has 9,376 votes, but results shared on Twitter show that APC got 19,589. In Michika, INEC results show that the APC has 15,793, but the tweet said APC won 15,795. Based on official results in Yola South, APC has 32,255, but results shared on Twitter show that APC got 29,040. Similarly, in Mayo Belwa, the PDP got 20,239 votes according to INEC results, but the numbers on Twitter were cut down to 18,392. DUBAWA analysis shows that Twitter users twisted these numbers to spread fake news.&nbsp;&nbsp; The only official acceptable results are the ones announced by the electoral commission INEC. The alleged tweet shared fake numbers to show that Ms Binani won the election. The tweet and numbers are changed from what the electoral commission INEC announced at the state collation centre in Yola.&nbsp; Ahead of the Nigerian elections, there has been an explosion of fake news across social media platforms. Nigerians are now increasingly wary of any content regardless, as different political parties and political actors have unwittingly helped peddle misinformation. Divisive content on religion and ethnicity is also littered across social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and WhatsApp. The Adamawa governorship election has been declared inconclusive by INEC. Although final results tallied by INEC showed that Mr Fintiri of the PDP scored the highest votes, INEC said the cancelled votes were more than the margin of victory between Mr Fintiri and the runner-up, Ms Dahiru.\u00a0 Therefore, the electoral commission said a new date would be fixed for re-run elections in areas where elections could not be held in the state. The researcher produced this explainer per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame Kari Kari fellowship partnership with premium times to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"hannibal_claim_source":"","hannibal_source_label":"","hannibal_card_color":"blue","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[1572,1574],"tags":[],"verdict":[],"ppma_author":[2757],"class_list":["post-14293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explainers","category-media-literacy"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8R6dE-3Ix","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":2757,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kabir-yusuf","display_name":"Kabir Yusuf","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6c2a2dbabaf516bb081dd22c59cce46258b856f248535bb4cfb7ed642de4b612?s=96&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/twitter-user-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1766&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14295,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14293\/revisions\/14295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14293"},{"taxonomy":"verdict","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/verdict?post=14293"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}