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Fabricated Vanguard website trends with fake Kadaria Ahmed’s interview

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Claim: A sponsored advert from an Instagram account claimed that the Central Bank of Nigeria has sued Kadaria Ahmed, founder of Daria Media, over an alleged interview with News Central TV.

Fabricated Vanguard website trends with fake Kadaria Ahmed’s interview

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An Instagram page, Stoney Transit Homes, made a sponsored post on Dec. 18, 2024, with a featured image designed like a report from the Vanguard newspaper. The supposed headline read, “Kadaria Ahmed didn’t know the microphone was on. We say goodbye to him forever. This is a sad day for all of Nigeria.” 


When we clicked on the attached link, it displayed another page with the headline, “Central Bank of Nigeria sues Kadaria Ahmed over statements she made on live television,” indicating an alleged legal feud between the revered media icon and Nigeria’s apex bank. 

DUBAWA attempted to click on the page for more information, but the sponsored post is not connected to any page. We searched for Stoney Transit Homes on Instagram but got no results.

As of Jan. 20, 2025, seven comments were seen on the page’s comment section, all indicating that the page and post are malicious. However, a popular Nigerian blog, BaseTVreport, published the claim.

The severity of the information’s implications for Ms Ahmed’s reputation prompted DUBAWA to verify the claim.

Verification

We clicked on the link to the designed “Vanguard newspaper” website and discovered the features of the report differed from the original Vanguard publications.

We validated our findings using a report titled “Positive Signals for Healthcare, by Dakuku Peterside,” published on Jan. 7, 2025. Original Vanguard publications had their logo at the top left corner of the page layout, compared to the fake link, which placed the logo at the top centre. 

Also, the Vanguard page layout contains the publication date, “news,” and their social media accounts represented by the symbols on the page’s lefthand side. Also, the righthand side displays the latest published news but these features were absent in the fake link.

We proceeded to identify the different font and page designs used in both instances. While Vanguard newspaper uses font colour code #3A3A39 and size 22 of the Cardiff typeface for the headline, the fake page used colour code #2A303B and size 32 of the Georgia typeface. 

The fake link’s copy claimed News Central TV conducted the interview allegedly between Ms Ahmed and Rabiu Kwankwaso, Kano state’s former governor. We used Google Lens to trace the source of the image in the link to a Facebook post made by Mr Kwankwaso on Nov. 19, 2022. 

On the day, he was invited as the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) presidential candidate to the Candidates Presidential Town Hall. In this media interactive series, Ms Ahmed interviewed presidential candidates ahead of the 2023 election in Nigeria. Throughout the interview, the speakers did not advertise the money-doubling platform.

Fabricated Vanguard website trends with fake Kadaria Ahmed’s interview
Screenshot of the interview image’s source.

DUBAWA went through the transcript of the supposed interview on the website and noticed it was portrayed as if Ms Ahmed vouched for a trading platform called ParagonixPrimeX. When we clicked the Vanguard logo on the website, it redirected users to the ParagonPrimeX platform.

Fabricated Vanguard website trends with fake Kadaria Ahmed’s interview
Screenshot of the ParagonPrimeX homepage. 

We could not find evidence of any litigation against Ms Ahmed on the Central Bank of Nigeria’s website and social media accounts. DUBAWA also checked through Vanguard newspaper and other credible media organisations since Dec. 18, 2024, and found no news about such an incident.

Conclusion

There is no record of Nigeria’s Central Bank suing Kadaria Ahmed over an interview published in Vanguard newspaper. The interview is fake, and the claim is a mischievous attempt to promote a phoney trading platform named ParagonPrimeX.

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