{"id":8110,"date":"2021-06-08T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T09:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=8110"},"modified":"2021-06-08T10:00:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T09:00:08","slug":"how-nigerias-ex-lawmaker-spread-falsehood-on-covid-19-vaccine-mislead-followers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/how-nigerias-ex-lawmaker-spread-falsehood-on-covid-19-vaccine-mislead-followers\/","title":{"rendered":"How Nigeria\u2019s ex-lawmaker spread falsehood on COVID-19 vaccine, mislead followers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To many Nigerians, Dino Melaye is a man of several talents \u2013 a vocal politician, activist in early years and author of a book. Outside politics, the former senator\u2019s skills in singing and dancing, which he deploys in his political battles, arguably endear him to Nigerians the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of his \u2018hit songs\u2019 popularly titled \u2018ajekun iya<\/a>\u2019, Mr Melaye was seen dancing and singing after a senate committee acquitted him in an alleged case of certificate forgery. In several others, he would mock his political opponents<\/a>, and sometimes praise God<\/a> for victories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this mix of talent and a political career constantly laced with controversies, the former lawmaker who represented his people at both the House of Representatives and the Senate, constantly engages his millions of followers on the social media, especially on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This engagement took a new life in 2020 when Mr Melaye started tweeting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning from late 2020, he has released a series of tweets on vaccination against the novel coronavirus, mostly untrue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using the \u2018tweet content\u2019 feature on Tweet Deck and a key word search of \u2018COVID-19\u2019 and \u2018vaccine\u2019, over a dozen tweets, containing purported factual information on vaccination were traced to Mr Melaye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An analysis of the reach and effect of some of his tweets shows that through millions of primary reach and thousands of reproduction, Mr Melaye\u2019s conjectural tweets on vaccination have real life effects. With over two million Twitter followers, even at the time the virus was detected, Mr Melaye\u2019s words were words of authority to many. Only a few Nigerian politicians have more followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, we take a look at the tweets and their metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact-checkers\u2019 treasure trove<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On December 31, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved<\/a> the Pfizer\/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use against the virus. Two weeks earlier, Mr Melaye had put out a video on Twitter to advise his followers on the expected vaccine. Way Back Machine only crawled on Mr Melaye\u2019s Twitter page once in 2020. By then (December 16, 2020), he had about 2.55 million followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Way Back Machine data<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The video titled \u2018Say no to Covid 19 Vaccine\u2019 lasted about one minute 50 seconds. He started by calling on Africans, particularly Nigerians, not to accept the use of any vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said further, \u201cFor 100 years now, we could not find a vaccine for cancer, for over 40 years we are yet to find a vaccine for HIV\/AIDS, for over another 100 years research is still going on to find a vaccine for diabetes. How on earth is it possible that in one year, you find a vaccine for COVID-19?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am calling on African leaders not to allow Africans to be used as guinea pigs by developed nations for their satanic reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe say no to the application of any vaccine in Africa. We call on the Minister of Health of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to immediately discontinue the interaction with those who want to give us vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without any evidence, he claimed that \u2018intelligence gathering\u2019 had shown that some people who took the vaccine died in just three days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of Friday June 4, Twitter data shows that the video had garnered 75 thousand views, over 3000 likes, and over 1, 800 retweets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Dino Melaye advises Africans against COVID-19 vaccine<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The tweet did not stop on Melaye\u2019s page. It was retweeted close to over 2000 times across the platform. Twitter Advanced search returned the top five associates who interacted with the tweet. These associates, who retweeted Melaye\u2019s tweet also got enmeshed in considerable interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a total of over 100 thousand followers FS Yusuf (@_Yusuf, Dr. Ben Gbenro (@bengbenro), Bruce Batemen Esq (@demigodgeous), Nwankpa (@Nwankpa_A) and Daddy G.O (oboy_jay) all retweeted the video without captions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video was more redistributed and viewed on YouTube. Top five pages who shared it on the platform amassed over 700,000 views. Other blogs and websites also shared both Mr Melaye\u2019s narrative alongside the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Majority of comments on this tweet were dismissive; in fact some fact-checks<\/a> were published to debunk it but this came expectedly late and a good number of his followers took the message in. While some vowed never to take the vaccine, some others urged people to take the words of the politician seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Melaye\u2019s tweet widely reproduced on Youtube<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s amazing how quickly people on this TL dismiss this very important message. It rather needs to be amplified,\u201d a user replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some who came across the tweet but decided not to interact, it\u2019s never vaccination. How this played out will be examined later in this piece but let\u2019s first take a look at some other bogus claims on the \u2018inefficiency\u2019 of the COVID-19 vaccine by Mr Melaye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early 2021, an image of Remdesivir<\/a>, a drug considered for the treatment of hepatitis and Ebola virus, surfaced on social media. On the pack, it was indicated that the drug was for use in 47 African countries and not for sale in the US, Canada, or EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Melaye picked it up and shared<\/a> with the caption \u201cwhat is the meaning of this biko?\u201d Despite fact-checking efforts<\/a>, many of his followers who had assumed the drug to be a vaccine replied to his insinuation in the affirmative. At least over 1, 000 reactions were tracked across several platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Melaye\u2019s tweet on Remdesivir<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy God, they (they) want to kill us since covid-19 could not do it,\u201d one replied. Another wrote, \u201cWho else observed Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya were exempted? Sudan was the only country amongst the North African countries that was included. Maybe the black skinned nation is their major target.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close observation of replies on the tweet shows that over half of the 538 commenters (as of June 6) believe the insinuation. The tweet further reinforced an earlier conspiracy theory of African countries being targeted and marked for a wipe out. But Mr Melaye was not done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On January 21, he tweeted a video where he gave an over 2-minute warning to the federal government<\/a> on planned vaccination, stating that vaccines are developed to suit country-type COVID-19 variants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then went ahead two months later to disparage the AstraZeneca vaccine received by the federal government. In an interview with Roots TV<\/a>, with thousands of views on other pages, Mr Melaye claimed that AstraZeneca is the least potent of vaccines. This time, he appeared to have reneged on his total intolerance for vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Melaye’s tweet on AstraZeneca<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying Nigerians should not take COVID-19 vaccine, but what I am saying, in essence, is that \u2014-there are four notable vaccines approved by WHO- AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson\u2019s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and the one by Moderna. The least most potent of the four is AstraZeneca and the one with greater side effects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He later shared an image on Twitter<\/a> comparing these vaccines with similar disparaging captions. His claims, mostly inaccurate, were fact-checked here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Melaye\u2019s claims reached many people<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Again, majority of the commenters agreed but what happened offline?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuel for confirmation bias<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a popular Redeemed Church in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, it was time for another Sunday sermon in January 2021. The lead pastor whose name is excluded from this story for privacy reasons, had decided to teach on end time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe pastor told us he was not going to discourage you but he won\u2019t advise you to take it. He said he won\u2019t take the vaccine. For me he was just saying don\u2019t take it,\u201d Milon, a member of the church recounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That time, the vaccine was yet to arrive in the country but it was expected to come soon through the COVAX facility. On March 2, four million doses of the vaccine arrived in Nigeria<\/a> and weeks later, administration of the vaccine commenced in Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the popular mindset of church members and authority, a civil servant member of the church took the vaccine early in April and died one week after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost people believed it was the vaccine that killed her. Dino Melaye\u2019s comments were used as a point of reference whenever my church members talked about the vaccine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter her death, you\u2019ll hear people saying we were told not to take it and she (the deceased) acted otherwise. The death really reinforced his comments. I don\u2019t think up to one per cent of members have taken the vaccine\u201d Milon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cEspecially, the youth in my church, they believe Dino Melaye was formerly in the APC (ruling party) before, so if he\u2019s saying this there must be an iota of truth. My sister is not taking this and I know it\u2019s due to these tweets. She follows him and loves him so much,\u201d Milon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milon took his first jab in March and is due for the second soon but he dares not inform his family or any of his church members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While vaccination is understood to be individuals\u2019 decision, the influence of public figures like Dino Melaye cannot be overlooked. This was confirmed in interaction and interviews with some youth members of the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany prominent people in the country such as Dino Melaye, Pastor Chris (being) against this vaccine is enough reason to convince someone not to (take the vaccine.),\u201d a female member of the church said, adding that \u201cthe way the country is, it\u2019s actually hard for someone to trust government officials, you feel like how sure am I that something is not behind this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Melaye did not respond to a request for an interview sent to him via messaging app as his known lines were switched off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the church, five other youth members who spoke on record would not take vaccines. Their faith leaders have warned against it and their political leaders are not ready to be vaccinated, why should they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This publication was produced as part of IWPR\u2019s Africa Resilience Network (ARN) programme, administered in partnership with the Centre for Information Resilience(CIR), the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and Africa Uncensored.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To many Nigerians, Dino Melaye is a man of several talents \u2013 a vocal politician, activist in early years and author of a book. Outside politics, the former senator\u2019s skills in singing and dancing, which he deploys in his political battles, arguably endear him to Nigerians the most. In one of his \u2018hit songs\u2019 popularly titled \u2018ajekun iya\u2019, Mr Melaye was seen dancing and singing after a senate committee acquitted him in an alleged case of certificate forgery. In several others, he would mock his political opponents, and sometimes praise God for victories. With this mix of talent and a political career constantly laced with controversies, the former lawmaker who represented his people at both the House of Representatives and the Senate, constantly engages his millions of followers on the social media, especially on Twitter. This engagement took a new life in 2020 when Mr Melaye started tweeting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning from late 2020, he has released a series of tweets on vaccination against the novel coronavirus, mostly untrue. Using the \u2018tweet content\u2019 feature on Tweet Deck and a key word search of \u2018COVID-19\u2019 and \u2018vaccine\u2019, over a dozen tweets, containing purported factual information on vaccination were traced to Mr Melaye. An analysis of the reach and effect of some of his tweets shows that through millions of primary reach and thousands of reproduction, Mr Melaye\u2019s conjectural tweets on vaccination have real life effects. With over two million Twitter followers, even at the time the virus was detected, Mr Melaye\u2019s words were words of authority to many. Only a few Nigerian politicians have more followers. First, we take a look at the tweets and their metrics. Fact-checkers\u2019 treasure trove On December 31, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved the Pfizer\/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use against the virus. Two weeks earlier, Mr Melaye had put out a video on Twitter to advise his followers on the expected vaccine. Way Back Machine only crawled on Mr Melaye\u2019s Twitter page once in 2020. By then (December 16, 2020), he had about 2.55 million followers. The video titled \u2018Say no to Covid 19 Vaccine\u2019 lasted about one minute 50 seconds. He started by calling on Africans, particularly Nigerians, not to accept the use of any vaccine. He said further, \u201cFor 100 years now, we could not find a vaccine for cancer, for over 40 years we are yet to find a vaccine for HIV\/AIDS, for over another 100 years research is still going on to find a vaccine for diabetes. How on earth is it possible that in one year, you find a vaccine for COVID-19?\u201d \u201cI am calling on African leaders not to allow Africans to be used as guinea pigs by developed nations for their satanic reasons. \u201cWe say no to the application of any vaccine in Africa. We call on the Minister of Health of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to immediately discontinue the interaction with those who want to give us vaccines.\u201d Without any evidence, he claimed that \u2018intelligence gathering\u2019 had shown that some people who took the vaccine died in just three days. As of Friday June 4, Twitter data shows that the video had garnered 75 thousand views, over 3000 likes, and over 1, 800 retweets. The tweet did not stop on Melaye\u2019s page. It was retweeted close to over 2000 times across the platform. Twitter Advanced search returned the top five associates who interacted with the tweet. These associates, who retweeted Melaye\u2019s tweet also got enmeshed in considerable interaction. With a total of over 100 thousand followers FS Yusuf (@_Yusuf, Dr. Ben Gbenro (@bengbenro), Bruce Batemen Esq (@demigodgeous), Nwankpa (@Nwankpa_A) and Daddy G.O (oboy_jay) all retweeted the video without captions. The video was more redistributed and viewed on YouTube. Top five pages who shared it on the platform amassed over 700,000 views. Other blogs and websites also shared both Mr Melaye\u2019s narrative alongside the video. Majority of comments on this tweet were dismissive; in fact some fact-checks were published to debunk it but this came expectedly late and a good number of his followers took the message in. While some vowed never to take the vaccine, some others urged people to take the words of the politician seriously. \u201cIt’s amazing how quickly people on this TL dismiss this very important message. It rather needs to be amplified,\u201d a user replied. For some who came across the tweet but decided not to interact, it\u2019s never vaccination. How this played out will be examined later in this piece but let\u2019s first take a look at some other bogus claims on the \u2018inefficiency\u2019 of the COVID-19 vaccine by Mr Melaye. Early 2021, an image of Remdesivir, a drug considered for the treatment of hepatitis and Ebola virus, surfaced on social media. On the pack, it was indicated that the drug was for use in 47 African countries and not for sale in the US, Canada, or EU. Mr Melaye picked it up and shared with the caption \u201cwhat is the meaning of this biko?\u201d Despite fact-checking efforts, many of his followers who had assumed the drug to be a vaccine replied to his insinuation in the affirmative. At least over 1, 000 reactions were tracked across several platforms. \u201cMy God, they (they) want to kill us since covid-19 could not do it,\u201d one replied. Another wrote, \u201cWho else observed Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya were exempted? Sudan was the only country amongst the North African countries that was included. Maybe the black skinned nation is their major target.\u201d Close observation of replies on the tweet shows that over half of the 538 commenters (as of June 6) believe the insinuation. The tweet further reinforced an earlier conspiracy theory of African countries being targeted and marked for a wipe out. But Mr Melaye was not done. On January 21, he tweeted a video where he gave an over 2-minute warning to the federal government on planned vaccination, stating that vaccines are developed to suit country-type COVID-19 variants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8111,"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":[1572,4,121],"tags":[1812,562,1683,460,347,1921,1682],"verdict":[],"ppma_author":[1149],"class_list":["post-8110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explainers","category-featured","category-health","tag-astrazeneca","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19-vaccine","tag-dino-melaye","tag-featured","tag-pfizer-biontech","tag-world-health-organisation-who"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8R6dE-26O","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1149,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kemi-busari","display_name":"Kemi Busari","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Kemi.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Kemi.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Busari","first_name":"Kemi","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/pasted-image-0.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8110","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=8110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8110"},{"taxonomy":"verdict","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/verdict?post=8110"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}