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Claim: Several X accounts allegedly belonging to Baltasar Ebang Engonga, the director general of the National Financial Investigation Agency of Equatorial Guinea, have addressed the leaked sex tapes linked to him.
Verdict: Misleading! Many X pages were only recently renamed to reflect the embattled DG’s name, with some tagged as parody accounts.
Full Text
In the past 48 hours, the Nigerian social media space has been flooded with reports and video clips allegedly showing an inappropriate encounter between the Director General of Equatorial Guinea’s National Financial Investigation Agency, Mr Engonga, and several women.
While there are claims that the embattled DG had affairs with women who worked under him, it is also alleged that close family members were involved.
As a result of this development, Nguema Mangue, the Vice President of Equatorial Guinea, has called for installing surveillance cameras in courts and ministries to combat illicit behaviour among public officials in the country.
Also, according to reports by the country’s local media, Ahora EG, the officials said to be involved in the leaked tapes have been suspended.
Amid the controversy, some viral posts on X have been linked to the embattled public official. In one of the posts making the rounds, Mr Engonga purportedly claimed that the videos linked to him were AI-generated.
Another post also went viral, in which he was alleged to have encouraged his wife to be strong for the family, appraising her as his ‘hero’.
Several other accounts are also in the name of the embattled DG, such as these ones created in November 2024, and this.
But are these posts from the embattled DG? Due to the sensitivity of the issues and potential impact, DUBAWA probed some of the X accounts linked to Mr Engonga.
Verification
Reports from local media showed the country has ordered an investigation into the scandal.
Note that Mr Engonga had been taken into custody over corruption allegations at Black Beach prison before the videos started trending on social media.
Some X pages from which these screenshots were taken showed they are not operated by the embattled DG.
For instance, this account @ChiefBaltasar, though created in July 2021, clearly tagged itself as a parody account and had probably just recently changed the username to reflect the DG’s name.
DUBAWA trailed posts from the account a few days before Engonga’s scandal started trending and observed the user posting issues relating to Kenya.
The users’ reposts and posts have been pointing to Nairobi, Kenya; some posts have even been made in the East African country’s local language.
Also, in a post made by the user on Oct. 24, 2024, a comment made by another user showed that the handle had just been changed from @Gathuruarri.
The other account, @Engongabaltasar, created in July 2022, recently changed its handle from @BradleyMtall. Comments the user made on October 26 showed the previous handle.
This account also comments on Kenyan politics in the East African country before the sudden switch to Equatorial Guinea in the past few hours. There was a post of a picture with a son, too.
While X’s policy on misleading and deceptive identities allows for parody, commentary, or fan accounts, it explicitly states what must be done to ensure the account is easily identifiable as such.
“To avoid confusing others about an account’s affiliation, Parody, Commentary, and Fan accounts must distinguish themselves in their account name and in their bio,” the policy stated.
The identified accounts have not sufficiently noted their parody status in their account names except for this and this account, which included parody in their bios. However, they did not include the distinguishing terms in the account names.
This development again demonstrates rising cases of impersonation on social media. Recently, DUBAWA explored the issue in one of its articles to commemorate this year’s edition of its Week for Truth.
Conclusion
The viral posts purportedly linked to Mr Engonga are from accounts impersonating him.
