|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
GistReel, an online news publication, has updated its report, claiming that a chief magistrate court in Sokoto sentenced one Hamdiyya Shariff to two years imprisonment and 12 cane strokes.
This development followed a fact-check by DUBAWA, which made Facebook instantly flag the publication’s social media post on its application, in line with the third-party fact-checking initiative.
The report published on the outlet’s Facebook account on April 11, 2025, detailed how Hamdiyya, a social media critic, had been sentenced for her critical comments against the Sokoto State government.
Earlier in November 2024, the police authorities in Sokoto arrested and charged Hamdiyya to court for insulting the state governor, Ahmad Aliyu, and “inciting disturbance.”
The 18-year-old had made a now-brought-down TikTok post advocating for displaced people.
Setting the record straight
However, DUBAWA’s fact-check revealed that the report is false. After a thorough keyword search, we found no news reports to validate the report.
We were able to establish that Hamdiyya’s case is still in court. We also contacted Rufai Ahmad, the Sokoto State police spokesperson, who stated that the alleged court sentence is untrue.
Following DUBAWA’s fact-check, the GistReel’s report was updated on Friday, May 2, 2025, to reflect current realities.
Lano Lanny Blaq, a staffer of the online news wire, communicated the development to DUBAWA via email.
“We erroneously published false news and were fact-checked by you,” he said in his email. “We have updated the news content and Facebook post. Our writer has been admonished to take extra care when verifying news content. Kindly edit your post so the flag on us can be lifted.”
About DUBAWA
DUBAWA is West Africa’s foremost independent, non-partisan fact-checking and verification platform, established to tackle the spread of misinformation, fake news, and disinformation.
The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), formerly the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), launched it in 2018.
From fact-checks, media literacy articles to video explainers, the fact-checking project aims to amplify truth and sanitise the continent’s information ecosystem from pollution from fake narratives.
