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Claim: A video of a Nigerian lawmaker announcing his monthly earnings goes viral.
Verdict: Findings show that the footage was extracted from a more extended version and used to promote a misleading narrative.
Full Text
Over the years, there have been controversies around the actual amount Nigerian lawmakers earn. Again, this conversation was brought forward with a 27-second video making the rounds on WhatsApp. In the video, an unnamed lawmaker was seen giving a breakdown of his earnings.
“I, a member of this house, collect a basic salary of N2.5 (million) per month,” he started. “Furniture allowance, N7.5 million; newspaper allowance, N1.2 million per month; wardrobe allowance, N621 thousand per month; recess allowance, N248 thousand per month; accommodation allowance, N4.9 million per month; utility allowance, N828 thousand per month; personal assistance allowance, N621 thousand per month.”
Apart from WhatsApp groups where DUBAWA first saw this video, it has sparked more arguments on Facebook and X, as seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
We fact-checked an X claim recently, putting the Nigerian senators’ monthly earnings at about N2.48 million. Due to the nature and virality of this claim, DUBAWA opted to conduct this verification.
Verification
The circulating video had an Oluwatobi Enitan tag all over it. We checked the name, and it turned out that it was a journalist who often posts videos from the national assembly plenary sessions.
DUBAWA found the full version of the clip on Ms Enitan’s YouTube channel. The lawmaker Leke Abejide, a member representing Yagba Federal Constituency, Kogi state, drew the House’s attention to a social media user, Adeola Fayehun, who made claims about his earnings.
Mr Abejide expressed concern that Ms Fayehun, based in the United States, has made it a mission to misinform Nigerians, particularly his constituents, about National Assembly events. He stated that she has repeatedly incited the public against him.
This time, she had allegedly posted the supposed amount earned by this lawmaker on social media. However, the viral footage did not capture his complete statements. Instead, it was taken, cutting out the first 12 seconds and stopping precisely 42 seconds into the 2 minutes and 45 seconds that Mr Abejide used in speaking.
The words preceding the narrative the clip was pushing were “One Adeola Fayehun, who alleged on social media and Instagram that I, a member of this house, collect a basic salary of N2.5 (million) per month…”
We searched through Mr Abejide’s Facebook page and found a post where he debunked the narrative as false.
He said, “I raised a point of order on privilege concerning claims by a particular social mischievous individual. In the original video, the privilege of the 360 members of the House of Representatives had been breached by the false claims of what the earnings of the members on monthly basis. The bogus claims about our earnings is false and far from what could be called the truth.”
Conclusion
The viral footage was taken from a more extended version, edited and used to drive a misleading narrative.
