Claim: News report claims the president sacked the Central Bank governor.
Our findings show President Muhammadu Buhari did not sack the Central Bank governor, Godwin Emefiele.
Full Text
Since information that Godwin Emefiele intends to run for president came into the public space, there have been calls for him to resign. Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari asked all appointed officers seeking political offices to resign.
Although the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor first denied his intention to run, he went ahead to ask a court to declare him eligible for the presidential ticket of any political party while serving as the governor.
This was, however. recently withdrawn. Following this, a screenshot went viral on WhatsApp with the claim that the president had sacked the CBN governor.
This was shared on a WhatsApp user’s WhatsApp status with the caption “if this is true, then buhari did a very good job”.
The said screenshot has the headline “BREAKING NEWS; Buhari sacks CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele”. The screenshot has the byline “Opinion Nigeria” and it was shared on Wednesday May 25,2022.
Verification
We first carried out a keyword search on the byline in the screenshot to find if the said report actually exists or the image was created.
We found the website opinionnigeria.com and the news story on the governor’s sack was shared 12 hours ago. The story which linked this sack to the president’s order that appointed officers should resign noted that the president cannot unilaterally sack the governor.
We however noticed that the story did not quote anybody or platform as its source. This is suspicious because an ideal news story always has and quotes a source..
Having found that this screenshot was from an actual report, we needed to establish if the president actually sacked Mr Emefiele, so we conducted a keyword search on google. This led to fact-checks by Daily Trust, and BBC, and news reports by Punch, ripples Nigeria etc . debunking this.
We also found out that the Central Bank chief of Algeria, Rostom Fadli, was recently removed. This may have fueled the rumour in Nigeria.
A keyword search on Twitter led to a news report by The Nation, which debunked this claim quoting the CBN’s spokesman Osita Nwanisobi.
A look at the CBN’s website showed there was so far no release on the rumoured sack. The latest release on the website is on Tuesday, May 24, 2022 on a fire incident at its Makurdi branch.
Seeing that the bank’s spokesperson was quoted by the news reports debunking the claim, DUBAWA went ahead to send an enquiry email to the bank because it was too late to put a phone call across.
Also, a look at the Twitter handle of the president’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, showed nothing of that nature. No press release or announcement about the governor’s rumoured sack.
The state house website which publishes news on the presidency’s recent activities also did not have any news of the rumoured sack.
Conclusion
Our findings and news reports show that the claim that president Muhammadu Buhari sacked the CBN governor is false.
