Claim: Bola Tinubu is doling N20,000 to Nigerians as swearing-in ceremony funds.
Verdict: FALSE. Our findings show that there is no such scheme by the President-elect. The All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson also debunked the claim.
Full Text
A public message has been circulating on Meta’s WhatsApp that the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, is doling the sum of N20,000 to Nigerians ahead of his inaugural ceremony scheduled for Monday, May 29, 2023.
“In a bid to (a) appreciate the good people of Nigeria for (v)oting president-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is (g)iving (o)ut 20,000 (n)aira to all Nigerians,” part of the message reads.
The latter part of the message also advised them to consult with a link attached to the message to check if they are eligible to receive the fund.
Mr Tinubu, who contested on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform in the 2023 general elections, leads his closest challenger, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, with over 1.8 million votes to emerge as the winner.
In the past, fund schemes have been accredited to political and business leaders; most times, these turn out to be false and fraudulent. Seeing how viral the message had gone, the credibility of the president-elect, and to prevent the public from falling victim to any suspicious scheme, DUBAWA chose to investigate the claim.
Verification
When we clicked the link and inputted the details that were asked, a message popped up requesting that the link be shared with five groups and fifteen friends. This is a well-known pattern adopted by Ponzi schemers and fraudsters through which they get the details of many people.
Also, scrutinising the page reveals that those behind it wanted to manipulate people into believing that the actual conversations happened on Facebook. However, we observed varying details that were either overlooked or not noticed.
On Facebook’s comment section, the “Like” icon comes first, then “Reply” and the time the message was sent comes last. But on the website, the time comes first, followed by “Likes,” and “Reply” comes last.
We also searched for credible media reports about the development, but no news outlet published them.
We then called the APC’s spokesperson, Felix Morka, who dismissed the claim as false.
Conclusion
Our findings and comments by the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson confirmed the claim to be false.
