Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
Please note that the FactCheckHub has not obtained any right from the authors or copyright owners of all third-party contents from embedded links and shall incur no liability in this regard.
IN June 2021 a post which alleged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has authorised the use of cryptocurrency “like the naira in Nigeria” was circulated online.
The uncredited post which was shared multiple times on WhatsApp noted that the apex bank has concluded plans to introduce cryptocurrency before the end of 2021.
The complete story was inaccessible except readers click on a hyperlink titled – ‘get the full story on phoenix’, Phoenix is an internet browser. After its download, the complete story opens.
THE CLAIM
That the CBN has authorised the use of cryptocurrency as a legal tender like Naira in the country.
The inaccurate report.
THE FINDINGS
The CBN’s acting Director of Corporate Communications Osita Nwanisobi told the FactCheckHub that it is false.
He said, “Nobody authorised anything of such”.
Nwanisobi, however, noted that plans are underway by the apex bank to unveil its digital currency before the end of 2021.
Earlier, on June 11, at the end of the 306th Bankers’ Committee meeting, the CBN’s Director of Information Technology Department Rakiya Mohammed had announced plans by the bank to unveil a digital currency, the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
The CBDC is fundamentally different from cryptocurrency in that it is a centralised and controlled currency.
The cryptocurrency which CBN described as “digital or virtual currencies issued by largely anonymous entities and secured by cryptography” is decentralised. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin are some examples of crypto.
The post as seen in a WhatsApp group.
CBDCs are digital currencies issued and governed by a country’s central bank, it is centralised and does not have the anonymity of cryptocurrency, as such they are not the same.
CBN’s view on cryptocurrency
The Nigerian government had restricted cryptocurrency transactions in the country.
On February 5, 2021, the CBN initiated policies discouraging Nigerians from transacting using the digital platform.
Two days after, on February 7, the bank justified further why Nigerians should be mindful of the digital currency, stressing that they are unregulated and unlicensed. They are also not recognised as legal tender in the country.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the CBN has authorised the use of cryptocurrency as a legal tender in the country is FALSE.
A video has been circulating on multiple WhatsApp groups in Nigeria which claims that eating “a banana a day keeps the coronavirus away.” The video has been found to be doctored with false claims.
The video, which was produced in the form of a news broadcast clip, recommends that eating a banana a day could help prevent humans from being infected with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
For over 15 months, the video has been in circulation on various social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and until recently Twitter and WhatsApp platforms in Nigeria.
The video, which has been forwarded several times on WhatsApp between March 2021 and June 2021, was traced to a March 15, 2020 post on Facebook here using Google Reverse Image Search. It has been viewed over 2,700 times on the Facebook page and now circulates widely on WhatsApp.
It is one of the several videos spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed over 3.8million deaths with about 176million confirmed cases globally as of June 15, 2021, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). These numbers continue to rise daily.
The World Health Organization (COVID-19) Dashboard as of 15th June, 2021. PHOTO CREDITS: www.who.int
Since the outbreak of the disease in December 2019, many social media platforms, especially WhatsApp chat groups and Facebook, have become vehicles for spreading misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19.
Users are often asked to forward such messages to as many people as possible.
Some of such viral WhatsApp videos or texts include those claiming that drinking palm oil or hot water, tea several times daily can cure COVID-19, or that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can reduce lifespan, or that the Nigerian government is giving out COVID-19 survival funds. These, among others, have been debunked by the ICIR’s FactCheckHub.
THE BANANA CLAIM
The claim reads: “Bananas are one of the most popular fruits worldwide. such as Vitamin C. All of these support health. people who follow a high fibre diet have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Bananas contain water and fibre, both of which promote regularity and encourage digestive health.
“Research made by scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia have proven that bananas improve your immune system due to the super source of Vitamins B-6 and helps prevent coronavirus. Having a banana a day keeps the coronavirus away.”
A screenshot of the viral WhatsApp video showing the false claim.
The claim has been attributed to researchers from Australia’s University of Queensland, adding that they have discovered that bananas can help prevent COVID-19 infection.
Same video, same claim but many edited versions
The 58-second video, which shows a news report by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), with the same banana claim, has been edited severally especially by a TikTok user, @dil_ka_raja2020 and YouTuber to include these texts inscriptions: “Bananas can beat this virus, Must Watch”; “Banana a day keeps the Coronavirus away.” He has over 12,000 followers with over 167,000 likes on his TikTok page.
Also, an edited 27-second version of the video posted from Pakistan on YouTube on 14th March, 2020 has also been viewed 318 times.
A screenshot of the fake video when analysed using an OSINT tool – InVid.
OSINT to the rescue
In verifying this video, this reporter utilised the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) tools to unravel the spread of this misinformation and authenticate the sources of the visuals put together in making the video.
Using keywords such as banana, COVID-19, this reporter used Hoaxy® to visualise the spread of the information on Twitter, as shown below:
The data show that texts containing the keywords have appeared in 465 tweets between 12th November, 2020 and 26th May, 2021, majorly from a Twitter user, @mb4hope. But the Twitter handle has been suspended and it is unclear why the social media platform has done that.
Similarly, this reporter used the Fake news debunker (image/video verification plugin) by InVID & WeVerify to analyse the visuals’ keyframes and contexts as well as its reverse image search tool to identify the sources of the various clips/images merged together in making the video.
The InVid tool helps journalists to verify contents posted on social media, especially when verifying videos and images.
Findings show that the video contains several footages from at least four different sources.
Keyframes analyses of the video using the Fake news debunker plugin by InVid.
The first footage in the video was truly from an ABC news clip that reported that researchers from Australia’s Queensland University were about to create a vaccine for the COVID-19. It was aired in January 2020.
Following a Google Reverse Image Search of this footage after extracting the keyframes using InVid – one of the OSINT tools – this reporter found the ABC news clip titled: “Race is on as Australian researchers rush to make coronavirus vaccine” on its official YouTube channel.
This reporter also discovered that the opening keyframes of the ABC News’ YouTube video (as shown on the LEFT screenshot) was similar to the first keyframe of the viral WhatsApp video (as shown on the RIGHT image). See the comparison of the two videos below as circled in red lines:
Screenshot of both video clips.
However, there was nowhere in the three-minute, 39-second ABC News (Australia) video where reference was made to bananas beating or preventing the COVID-19.
The Associated Press (AP) had earlier reached out via email to a University of Queensland spokesperson who confirmed that “the video is fake and said they strongly recommend people do not share it.”
Similarly, a Queensland University scientist Keith Chappell, who discussed the university’s efforts to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus in the ABC News video, had also told the AFP that the banana claim video “is definitely NOT true.”
In addition, video footage from the eight- to ten-second of the misleading WhatsApp video was seen on the Shutterstock videos website, using Reverse Image Search – another OSINT tool.
Further findings showed that the footages from the 12- to 23-second of the viral video were extracted from a YouTube clip made by Herbs Cures titled: “Health Benefits of Banana” and uploaded online on March 1, 2020.
Also, the ‘Herbs cures’ logo could be seen in the viral video. The ‘Herbs Cures’ video only listed the benefits of bananas and did not claim that bananas could prevent COVID-19 in the four -minute, thirty-eight second video.
Additional analysis also showed that the footages from the 24- to 31-second of the viral video were extracted from a news video published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in February 2020 titled: “How Scientists Are Trying to Develop a Coronavirus Vaccine.”
The four-minute, seven-second WSJ video did not claim that bananas could beat or prevent COVID-19.
Moreover, the claim has been debunked by other fact-checking and media organisations here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Can any food or fruit prevent one from being infected with COVID-19?
According to WHO, “there is no single food that will prevent you from catching COVID-19,” but bananas have nutritional values.
A screenshot from the WHO website.
Although the global health body has a nutrition fact-sheet for healthy diets that protect against malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, it said there was none that could protect anyone against COVID-19.
5/10: Does garlic cure COVID-19? Bananas? Vitamin-C?
Bananas are a fine fruit and garlic is a fine vegetable. But no. There are no clinical trials to suggest they have anti-coronavirus activity. Vitamin-C Is not even a fruit or a vegetable!
Scientists also advised that maintaining good nutritional status could help boost one’s immune system against COVID-19, adding that there was no evidence that any food or supplement would prevent infection or spread of the disease.
“Bananas are a fine fruit and garlic is a fine vegetable. But no. There are no clinical trials to suggest they have anti-coronavirus activity. Vitamin-C Is not even a fruit or a vegetable,” says an infectious diseases expert from the University of Maryland in the United States, Faheem Younus.
However, here are WHO-recommended steps to prevent the spread of the COVID-19.
CONCLUSION
The claim is FALSE! There is no credible evidence that eating bananas can beat or prevent COVID-19 infection.
The viral WhatsApp video was doctored from two news reports by the ABC News and WSJ respectively, as well as other video footages, to include references to bananas.
AS some Nigerians protested against the state of governance in the country during the June 12 Democracy day, an old open letter written by a former president of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo resurfaced on social media.
The letter which is shared with the date “June 12, 2021” has been shared repeatedly on social media, especially on WhatsApp groups.
An analysis of the letter shows it has similar content with a previous letter written by the former President.
Obasanjo led the nation twice. First as a military administrator from 1976 to 1979, and as a democratically elected president in 1999. He stayed in the office for eight years and left the office in 2007.
The altered letter circulating on social media.
Since he left office, he has played an active role as an elder statesman. Obasanjo would occasionally write letters to the country’s presidents in situations that demand attention.
For instance, during Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, about four similar letters were written to Jonathan on the nation’s state of affairs. One of such dates December 2, 2013. It was titled “Before it is too late.”
THE FINDINGS
A line by line check reveals the viral letter attributed to the former president was written by him on July 15, 2019.
Checks on each of the paragraphs show similar content, except for the closing section and the date.
The original letter published in reputable national dailies was released by Obasanjo’s media aide. It was also dated – July 15, 2019.
In addition, the FactCheckHub reached out to the Special Assistant on Media to Obasanjo, Kehinde Akinyemi by sharing the letter to him via WhatsApp, he confirmed that the letter is an old one.
“Okay. My verdict is that it was an old letter dated July 15, 2019. Thanks,” Akinyemi responded.
THE VERDICT
The findings shows that an old letter written by a former president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2019 resurfaced online in 2021 with some parts altered. Therefore, it is inaccurate and MISLEADING.
As troubling misinformation around COVID-19 and its vaccines hits Nigeria, the country also has to bother about cyber insecurity riding on the coattails of the pandemic.
In April 2020, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) warned the public about a spike in scam and phishing messages circulating on social media posing as help for COVID-19.
How it works
A message is circulated posing as one of the government interventions asking people to apply via a link.
The link is often customised by using a URL shortener or some characters changed. This ‘naijarealityview.com’ was customised to ‘https://bit.ly/fg-10500-weekly’ and this ‘npower.fmhds.gov.ng’ was replicated by changing the dots to dash ‘npower-fmhds-gov-ng’.
The link directs to a form on a website that would have some attributes of a government website like logo, name, and colour.
After filling the form, you are asked to share the link on WhatsApp at least 10 times or “until the bar is full”.
The websites have testimonial section designed to look like comments using Facebook, but the profiles are not clickable.
The websites don’t have a contact number, email or clickable social media accounts.
Who is, a query and response web tool that stores information regarding websites, shows all 13 sites reviewed were new, only registered between 2020 and 2021— after the coronavirus outbreak morphed into a pandemic.
Scam bunkers, a webtool that rates the legitimacy of websites noted that “most scam websites use domain names that are less than 6 months old”.
Defrauding people, getting clicks for advert or selling harvested information for broadcast emails and bulk SMS are some of the Motivation behind these scams, an IT expert with e86 Limited, Olugbenga Odeyemi, explained.
A CLAIM circulating on several WhatsApp groups in Nigeria says that aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs are the best cures for COVID-19.
The claim started spreading in 2020 in various parts of the world, especially the United States, but it gained momentum in Nigeria between March and May 2021.
“After a period of scientific discovery, doctors in Russia explained the treatment method by saying that the disease is a global trick,” part of the claim said.
“It is nothing but coagulation inside blood vessels (blood clots) and a method of treatment. Antibiotic tablets anti-inflammatory and take an anticoagulant (aspirin). This indicates that it is possible to treat the disease.”
The propagators of the information attribute the drug prescription to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, which, they say, claims that ventilators are no more necessary.
In this report, the reporter investigates the efficacy of aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs in treating COVID-19 patients.
Who is circulating the claim?
From the WhatApp platforms, the information is investigated on Twitter to identify those spreading it. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is used to achieve this result. One of the OSINT tools, Hoaxy®, is deployed by the reporter to visualise the spread of the information on Twitter.
Hoaxy® identifies several individual Twitter handles spreading the information to various communities. One of them is @unseen1_unseen, which has spread the information to at least five communities.
The communities have further disseminated the claim to eight other communities of Twitter users.
The Twitter handle @unseen1_unseen has 26 500 followers and follows 11 700 handles. It does not look like anyone’s real name, but it is an influential handle. The handle was created in July 2017, but a reverse image search shows that the handle stole the profile picture. The picture belongs to Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), one of the leading advocates of free markets and free trade in the mid-19 century.
Two of the handle’s followers are @Matt_VanDyke and @MurrayNewlands, founder of Sons of Liberty International Mattew VanDyke and contributor at Forbes Murray Newlands. Tweets from @unseen1_unseen support former President Donald Trump of the United States to handle shared sentiments with the former president.
The handle criticised the media for blaming the ex-president for January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington D.C. It also lampooned Jim Acosta of CNN for criticising Trump’s claim that COVID-19 originated in China.
Donald Trump is a well-known disseminator of false information. Washington Post identified 30,573 Trump’s misleading claims in four years. Most of his supporters are known to spread some of his false information.
Hoaxy visualization produced @mitchellvii, @unseen1_unseen and @cofefe777as spreaders claiming that aspirin, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory drugs are cures for COVID-19.
Another identified disseminator of the information is a Twitter account, @mitchellvii, which posted the same claim on August 12, 2020. This particular handle has spread the information mainly to a large number of Twitter users in a community. It is operated by Bill Mitchell, an American whose tweets support the Republican Party. In one of his posts, he casts aspersions on Liberals and immigrants in the United States. His tweets on immigration and COVID-19 are not different from Donald Trump’s.
However, the handle has been suspended by Twitter. It is not clear why the social networking service took that line of action.
One other major player visualised by Hoaxy is @cofefe777. This account quoted another Twitter user, @knucklebuster80, on October 15, 2020, regarding a claim that “doctors rate Hydroxychloroquine ‘most effective’ coronavirus treatment.”
The account has, however, been suspended by Twitter. It is also not clear why Twitter has taken that step.
But Twitter often takes action against the spread of false or misleading information or, in this case, disinformation. Trump’s tweets were once deleted, and his account later suspended by Twitter.
Covfefe or cofefe is a misspelling used by Donald Trump in a viral tweet in 2017. The meaning is not clear up to the moment.
All the three accounts are of American origin, not Russian, though the information was said to have emanated from the Eastern European country.
Did Russia claim that aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs are the best cure for Covid-19?
Russia has taken unusual steps in handling COVID-19. In June 2020, barely six months after the virus broke out, Russia approved an anti-influenza drug, Aviifavir, for the treatment of COVID-19 and the country planned to start delivering it to hospitals that month. In September, the country approved another drug, R-Pharm’s Coronavir, for treatment of outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infections.
The information on aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs being cures for COVID-19 was attributed to the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
However, findings show that the ministry has not approved aspirin, anti-inflammatory drugs or antibiotics for COVID-19 treatment.
The reporter combs through the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation’s website, but there is no evidence that it supports or has approved the use of those drugs to treat COVID-19.
Russia’s support for the three sets of drugs is also not published in all the papers investigated online. Russia, in March 2021, debunked some of the accompanying claims, such as the assertions that COVID-19 was man-made and it did not exist.
Antibiotics
Credit: www.nps.org.au
How effective are aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs for COVID-19 treatment?
A fact-check done by Reuters in April 2021 said symptoms of COVID-19 “can be treated with anticoagulants and anti-inflammatories, but antibiotics are not effective against the viral infection, and are only recommended for COVID-19 patients who also have a bacterial infection.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) guidance says the body has not recommended antibiotic therapy or prophylaxis for patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 unless signs and symptoms of a bacterial infection exist.
“Antibiotics cannot affect viruses,” a virologist, Bola Oyefolu, professor of virology at the Lagos State University (LASU), tells this reporter.
He says viruses are acellular and do not have enzymes that can digest food.
“If viruses infect a man, they would live in the body. They are like the military that appoints the best hands to man various government ministries,” he notes.
“They direct the enzymes to start digesting their own food. Thus, antibiotics cannot affect virus, but it is possible to prepare chemicals that can affect the virus. However, they have bad side effects.”
He concludes that it is false to claim that antibiotics can cure COVID-19 – a virus.
Medicals News, an online magazine, supports Oyefolu’s claim.
“Antibiotics do not treat viruses but are only effective against bacterial infections. People with COVID-19 may receive antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections,” the magazine says in one of its 2020 articles.
On aspirin, the WHO has not approved the drug for the treatment of COVID-19, but health researchers claim it can affect the virus.
A group of researchers surveyed 24 COVID-19 patients.
They found that mortality in the aspirin group was significantly lower than that in the non-aspirin group (P = .021 and P = .030, respectively).
A news magazine HealthDay News supports this claim, asserting that low-dose aspirin can shield people from COVID-19.
But a Nigerian trader Joy Ikonne claims that she used aspirin in March 2021 while suspecting COVID-19 infection – without conducting tests.
“I had terrible side effects such as abdominal pain, and I had heartache,” she says.
“I nearly died,” she added.
Biochemist Ife Azih, who has studied aspirin for over 30 years, tells this reporter that “aspirin in a minute concentration increases the body’s immunity.” Azih explains that the mechanism of treating COVID-19 with aspirin is not yet known.
He warns Nigerians and the world against using drugs without doctors’ prescriptions.
“Do not use it if it is not approved; it can kill. And let nobody assume that aspirin is a cure for COVID-19,” he says.
So far, there is no approval for the use of aspirin to treat COVID-19. The WHO and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the body regulating drug use in Nigeria, has not conducted clinical trials on aspirin and have only approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for prevention and treatment COVID-19.
On anti-inflammatory drugs, Harvard Medical School advises doctors to prescribe dexamethasone and other corticosteroids as potent drugs against the virus.
Oyefolu agrees, explaining that any anti-inflammatory drug can ginger an immune response.
“The body is hostile to anything foreign. When there is something foreign in the system, the cells will send microphages – their first line of reaction,” he says.
“The microphages are like soldiers. They have strong enzymes that will tear those foreigners into pieces. Other cells in the body will produce antibodies,” he explains.
Anti-inflammatory drug
Credit: www.nationalelfservice.net
Researchers, however, say that “it is biologically plausible that anti-inflammatory therapy should be revisited or explored.”
They argue that “only safe and efficacious vaccines and antiviral drugs were possibly the final answers to the control of the new coronavirus pandemic.”
NAFDAC, on its part, has not approved aspirin, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 in Nigeria.
“Clinical trial is not a thing one can handle casually; it requires guidance, supervision and experiment before approval so that it will not cause further damage,” NAFDAC’s Director-General Mojisola Adeyeye says.
“The trial is to determine whether it is actually working or not, after a sustained observation. NAFDAC is supposed to be the centre of the regulation of clinical trial effects,” she explains.
“Nobody can do any job of the clinical trial in the clinic or anywhere without passing through NAFDAC protocol,” she warns.
JUST as Nigerians on Saturday, June 12, took to the streets to hold protest against bad governance, corruption, insecurity and other forms of maladministration, an old video of a similar protest, the EndSars protest against police brutality, which held in October 2020, has resurfaced online.
In the video, the protesters were seen marching while a few of them were carrying a coffin and chanting “Buhari must go.”
A Twitter user, Sophia, with the username @90sSophie claimed that the video emanated from the June 12 protest held in 2021.
“We are stronger together. Nigeria will be great. #June12thProtest. RT this video massively,” her tweet read.
THE CLAIM
The video of protesters with a coffin chanting “Buhari must go” is from June 12 protest.
A screenshot of the tweet.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by The FactCheckHub show that the video emanated from the EndSARS protest of October 2020.
Multiple handle in the comment section noted that the video was old and from a different protest and she should take it down.
A_Real_One [@chi_bu_zee] wrote: Take this video down. You’re just causing more harm. I hope you’re not intentionally sabotaging our efforts just because of clout. #June12thProtest”
Duke Of The Streets [@CallmeUyi] wrote: “We are legit outside risking our lives. This is not the time for false narratives and sharing old online videos. We can’t be our own problems, please.”
Dogefatherbsc [@Rubyking7000] wrote: “Please take down this video, it makes the post fake, we don’t need anything that will make the protest look fake”.
DealSiderz [@Dealsiderz] wrote: “Stop posting old videos there is no motivation here”
Sophia responded with “Okay, but motivation needed”.
Sophia notified that the video is not from the June 12 protest.
The FactCheckHub subjected the video to verification by using the Invid video verifier which showed that video has been online since 2020.
The exact video and others from the same event taken from different angles appeared here, here, here and here on Twitter on October 19.
The video of protesters with coffin chanting “Buhari must go” is from October, 2020, EndSARS protest, therefore the tweet is inaccurate and MISLEADING.
On Saturday June 12, 2021, Many Nigerians across multiple locations took to the street in protest to show and air their grievance and dissatisfaction with the government.
This contributed to the continuing trending of the hashtag #June12thProtest.
Among those using the hashtags are some individuals who alleged that Twitter, or its CEO Jack Dorsey has changed the like and retweet button to green or the Nigerian flag in solidarity with the protest.
A search conducted by the FactCheckHub on Twitter using the phrase “Like button changed” showed results [archived here] of multiple tweets making the claims.
THE CLAIM
Twitter or its CEO Jack Dorsey changed the like and retweet button in solidarity with June 12 protest.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by the FactCheckHub show that the claims are false.
A Twitter user with the username @ChibuzorUkwu tweeted that the retweet button was changed from blue to green.
“Twitter has changed the retweet button colour from blue to green in solidarity with Nigerians on #June12thProtest’ Let’s light the candles of hope and unity that they thought was put out during #EndSARS. Jack is blessed,” his tweet read.
The Twitter retweet icon colour prior to June 12 was green and it is still green.
Findings revealed a noticeable change was made to the retweet option colour in 2016 and it has since been returned to its default green colour.
A Twitter user with the username @urPapaDeyCraze tweeted that the like button changed.
“The like button of any tweet carrying #June12thProtest just changed!!! jack is behind us! RT aggressively,” his tweet read.
The user attached screengrabs of a tweet showing the like button has been replaced by the Nigerian flag. One of the attached image has no flag to represent before S/he retweeted and the other has a flag to represent how after S/he retweeted.
Screenshots attached to the tweet.
The FactcheckHub traced the original Tweet and found that the claim is false. The tweet had showed the default red heart when liked.
The tweet shows red heart when liked and not a flag.
Furthermore, the FactCheckhub fact-checkers liked multiple tweets with the hashtag #KeepItOn and #June12thProtest and it did not change to a flag.
The Factcheckhub observed that the same person or a group of persons are behind this misinformation.
For instance the screenshot of tweets with flags as like icon in circulation has Provii [@provii8], @urpapapadeycraze, and David of FCT [@Dhavidote] as the alleged accounts.
A red flag that the images were manipulated is the the tweets have the same posting time of 8:29am, June 12, they have the same number of likes, quote tweets and content.
This led to further scrutiny and the Factcheckhub observed that these accounts which are existing are interacting with one another.
For instance @UrPapaDeyCraze, tweeted that the like icon changes to flag using a screenshot of Provii’s tweet. Provii came under the tweet to to ask for followers.
The fourth comment on UrPapaDeyCraze tweet shows Provii’s comment confirmation comment ” Wow it’s True guys”.
Dhavidote tweeted manipulated screenshot of his tweet and that of @UrPapadeyCraze
This pattern was noticed on the two other accounts too.
The people behind the misinformation are using it to get traction and engagement.
THE VERDICT
The claims that Twitter retweet and like icon changed in support of the June 12 protest in Nigeria is FALSE. Malicious actors are deliberately misinforming the public for their personal gain.
Troubling misinformation around COVID-19 and its vaccines hits Nigeria. The country also has to bother about cyber insecurity riding on the coattails of the pandemic.
In March 2021, an alum posted on her alumni WhatsApp group, “Hurry up and get N30,000 survival fund” along with a URL obscured by a link shortener.
Nigeria was at the start of lockdown brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A month later, another woman posted in the same WhatsApp group, “Apply for the COVID-19 relief fund provided by the Federal Government”.
Both women had simply forwarded the message as received, without verification.
The messages shared in a school alumni group
The first forwarded it after she heard some people got credited with money from the government’s COVID-19 relief fund.
“It was forwarded to me, so I had to forward it too. One of the persons I forwarded it to said it was a scam,” she narrated.
She never returned to tell her recipients it was a scam; they continued to share the message.
To mitigate the effect of the lockdown, the Nigerian government set up some relief programmes [here & here]. They are the programmes malicious actors rode on to carry out their nefarious activities.
This report tracked down 15 such posts in circulation between March 2020 when the lockdown went to effect to March 2021. Three of them are not directly related to COVID-19 but operate in the same format. 13 operate by directing people to websites, two to mobile numbers.
Spike in reports
The Central Bank of Nigeria, the country’s financial regulatory institution, noted that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Nigerian Police are to be reached in the case of fraudulent activities.
In April 2020, the commission which is empowered to investigate, prosecute and penalise economic and financial crimes in the country reported a spike in complaints for online scams as a result of the lockdown.
According to the commission’s boss, many of the fraudulent online messages require recipients to click and fill out an online survey and forward same to ten (10) Whatsapp users.
“The messages are embedded with malwares and other malicious codes which when clicked, trigger a program that steals and compromises mails, banking logins passwords, credit- related information and other critical data contained on the recipient’s devices,” the statement reads.
How it works
A message is circulated posing as one of the government interventions, and asking people to apply for the intervention via a link.
The link is often masked by using a URL shortener like bitly. This allows the link preview to be customised to have the key words. For instance, this is the customised link ‘https://bit.ly/fg-10500-weekly’ but the actual site it redirects to is ‘naijarealityview.com’.
The website is masked using link shortener
Sometimes a url will mimic the legitimate website by changing some characters. For instance, the humanitarian and social development website ‘npower.fmhds.gov.ng’ was replicated by changing the dots to dash ‘npower-fmhds-gov-ng’.
One or two character in the url is changed, in this instance dots are changed to dash
The link directs to a website that would have some attributes of a government website like logo, name, and colour.
Then a form asking for age, mobile number, location, email, name and so on.
After filling the form, you are asked to share the link to people in your network at least 10 times. The generated link is to be shared on WhatsApp.
One similarity cuts across these sites: a call to action to invite your friend until the bar is full. The invite button only redirects to WhatsApp.
A call to action button ask for the link to be shared multiple times on WhatsApp before you can access the purported benefit.
A fact-checker and investigations editor at HumAngle ‘Kúnlé Adébàjò, who has spent time debunking such claims since the pandemic, has insight why WhatsApp is preferred platform.
“These kinds of information are best shared on WhatsApp because of the instant messaging app’s end-to-end encryption feature that makes it difficult to track the source of a piece of information, unlike what we have with Twitter, Facebook, and so on,” he says.
The websites have a testimonial section designed to look like a comment made on a Facebook plugin. It is false and a dummy, a manipulated image, and not clickable.
The sites have dummy comment section.
A common feature: they don’t have a contact number, email and social media accounts. Any accounts on the site do not redirect to any social media handle.
Who is, a query and response web tool that stores information regarding websites, shows all 13 sites were new, only registered between 2020 and 2021— after the coronavirus outbreak morphed into a pandemic.
“It looks like the sort of web platforms they create are also temporary such that it’ll be hard to unravel who registered them,” Adébàjò says. “All this is deliberate.”
Adébàjò is not far off the mark. Scam bunkers, a webtool that rates the legitimacy of websites, also noted that “most scam websites use domain names that are less than 6 months old”.
A collage of the date of registration of some sites, showing they were registered after COVID-19 became a pandemic.
A pattern was observed that websites were tailored and registered immediately after an intervention is announced. In October, the government rolled an intervention for small businesses to register with (Corporate Affairs Commission) CAC for free. By January, linked sites were registered and phishing claims were in circulation, throwing a free trip to the UK into the pot.
A civil servant, Model Chris, shared one such tailored message on a WhatsApp chat: that a mobile network was giving out free internet data for people who had completed registration for their National Identity Number (NIN). Ten minutes later, she sent a follow up: “Please disregard this information.”
The government had earlier mandated mobile number registrations be linked to NINs.
The message from Chris.
Chris decided the site was a scam because after filling the form and sharing to multiple persons as prompted, she was not given the data promised.
She was asked whether she felt safe sharing her information with the site. “I did not share my information with them,” she replied.
Really? Didn’t she? A look at the site shows that you must provide, name, mobile number, email address and country/location before you get to the stage where you are prompted to share. Chris, like four other people interviewed, did not feel the information shared exposed them to risk.
But “It’s phishing,” says Igbanam Ogbuluijah, a software development engineer with Amazon.
It’s “basically gathering enough information to initiate an attack. You gather information, you gain trust, then you attack based on trust.”
A pattern is noticeable on such posts: first, the links are obscure; second, they change the characters in the domain name of the site they are masquerading as.
“The one I saw for a bank, the character ‘A’ was not Ascii 65 for the standard English alphabets which the bank uses but an extended character [A with an accent, grave circumflex Diaeresis or tilde] that looks like it. But it is not the same.”
The essence of this is because “Their job as a malicious actor is to create something that your cognitive window will not catch,” Ogbuluijah notes.
This makes it easy for distribution, as people tend to forward the messages without verifying it.
“Eventually someone will share it to someone who will share it to someone’s grandmother who doesn’t know and then she would click the link. When the malicious actors have an in, in a network they can then infiltrate,” says Ogbuluijah.
That was the case for Umar Hamza, who comes from a large family that operates a WhatsApp group comprising people of all ages and educational background living in different locations.
The elderly in the family tend to engage more with such posts, and it might be because “they are more trusting of things shared on the internet,” says Hamza.
He said, It is common for an account on the group to be compromised—whereby a person’s account is taken over by malicious actors after they click on scam links.
The number changes and the WhatsApp group is spammed with numerous suspicious messages.
A senior partner at the IT firm e86 Limited, Olugbenga Odeyemi, says WhatsApp is preferred because “these kinds of messages are targeted towards the older generation who generally believe that whatever is on ‘Whatsup’, as they call it, is authentic. If you put that kind of message on Twitter, it would not fly as we have a lot of young people there who can fact-check it and they will come to the comment to tell you this is fraudulent.”
Running these websites through scam bunkers for legitimacy shows their trust score rating as very bad, with most scoring zero percent.
The sites after subjected to tests on Scam bunkers had low trust scores with some getting zero.
How is WhatsApp tackling the spread of misinformation?
The end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp makes it difficult to trace the origin of a message. Recently, WhatsApp took steps to curb misinformation by implementing icons tagging posts as “forwarded multiple times” and limiting the number of persons that “highly forwarded messages” can be sent to. It was to help notification and slow down the spread of messages. After being forwarded five times, messages tagged can only be forwarded to one person or group at a time.
Currently, fact-checking anything on WhatsApp is extremely labour intensive. Newsrooms with fact-checking arms and fact-checking organisations like the FactCheckhub have set up ways for the public to send in what they suspect to be misinformation. Fact-Checkers then check the claim manually. This helps but it is not a practical solution.
What else…?
Adébàjò has laboriously debunked such claims and still gets new ones. That people are still sharing the messages suggests a change in “orientation” may be the way forward.
“The government needs to improve its communication mechanism so that people know exactly where to visit and whom to call for accurate information about new programmes and government-approved opportunities,” says Adébàjò.
He added that there is a need to work towards improving media literacy.
“The truth is: the red flags are there,” he says. “The general populace should be taught how to easily recognise and call them out or at least refuse to share them to others.”
The strategy of Nigerian banks—repeatedly warning their customers not to reveal their PINs or debit card details to strangers—can be adopted, Adébàjò adds.
A number circulating in one of the claims has been reported multiple times as spam.
Phishing through direct calls
Banks in Nigeria have persistently pushed for banking literacy, to stop customers sharing their account details.
Some customers get calls from people claiming to be “customer care” asking for card details. This tactic features in the claims under review.
Ezeogu Uchechukwu encountered that in April 2020. He got a call from a number claiming to be his bank’s “customer care”. A search of the number on Tru Caller—a smartphone application for identifying phone numbers—showed “Eunice Floxy” even though the caller’s voice was male. The caller told Ezeogu he was one of the beneficiaries of government palliatives of N45,000 but he would need to provid his bank card details.
It is not an isolated incident. In other cases, a number is circulated for users to dial. One of the circulated phishing posts claimed the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) was doling out palliatives to mitigate the impact of the lockdown and provided “07042835643” as contact number.
When put through Tru Caller, the number showed “Access bank Scammer” and had been reported 36 times as scam. The use of “Access bank” suggests the user might have impersonated the bank to defraud or attempt to defraud people.
This time around the message came with a mobile number instead of website links.
For those phishing websites that do not directly ask for your banking details, what is their motivation?
Aside generating advertising revenue – some of the websites had adverts – they redirect you to a totally different site.
Chris experienced it. That was also the case after filling the form for small business name registration.
Olugbenga, a senior partner at IT firm e86, said in the case of the COVID-19 messages, the motivation is to harvest names, phone numbers, email addresses and age range. These could be used for different things.
“They can sell this information to those who do broadcast emails and bulk SMS,” Olugbenga says. “These things are targeted, for the most part, as they already know your locations, name age and so on. So, they know the kind of things that will interest you.”
Innocuous enough, but it can also be harmful
“In this era of using the same email and phone numbers for multiple registrations. It can become a foundation to profiling a person -an average person has one email address that they use for all registrations including banking and school; this also applies to phone numbers,” says the expert.
“With this information and working with compromised persons in the bank they can easily defraud you.
“They can also call you and impersonate an organisation; you will never know where they got your number and they may come across as credible because they have your details”, Olugbenga explains.
Scam rate, a tool that rates legitimacy of sites, says treat with suspicion domain names that end with “.top, .club, .online, .co, .cc.”
In reference to shopping platforms, Scam rate notes to beware when a website sells all products with high discounts (e.g. 70% or 90%; the “Contacts” page should show also an email address or telephone number and not just a form; trust seals like McAfee SECURE or Verisign must be clickable; and a legit shopping site should have a Facebook or Instagram profile.
Did the Nigeria Attorney General of Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami flout Twitter ban? a question posed to the FactCheckHub for verification.
The Federal Government of Nigeria had ordered the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria.
This was followed by blocking access to the microblogging platform in the country, although this has been described as unconstitutional in some quarters.
Twitter’s suspension by the Government came two days after a post by the President, Muhammadu Buhari was taken down by the platform. He had threatened to crack down on insurrection while making reference to the civil war.
However, many Nigerians bypassed the restriction to continue accessing Twitter using Virtual Person Network [VPN].
In reaction, Malami ordered for the prosecution of anyone who violates the ban.
“Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, has ordered the prosecution of offenders of the federal government ban on Twitter operations in Nigeria,” a statement from his office read.
The wife of the President Aisha Buhari deactivated her account few hours after the announcement, this was not the case for the President, Malami and other top government functionaries who as of June 6, still had ‘live’ account the ICIR report.
In a turn of events, on June 8, Malami on his verified Facebook page – archived here – announced that he has deactivated his account, he accompanied it with a screenshot.
A screenshot of Malami’s post on Facebook.
Lifting of the ban, traveling out of the country or by VPN are some of the ways to access Twitter.
The ban has not been lifted and Malami did not announce that he was outside Nigeria when he accessed his account. This leaves the VPN option.
A VPN icon can be seen at the top right of the screenshot he posted.
Screenshot shared by Malami shows VPN icon.
Available information suggest that it is TRUE Malami flouted the Twitter ban to access his account. Whether he will be prosecuted, remains to be seen.
THE Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) on June 5, 2021 claimed that Nigeria is the only African country where Twitter is restricted.
SERAP made the claim on its official Twitter page amidst the ban placed on Twitter in Nigeria by the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari.
““BREAKING: Nigeria is currently the only country in Africa, where Twitter is restricted,” the tweet read.
The tweet already garnered 1,279 retweets and 2,172 likes as of 2pm on June 7, 2021.
The FactCheckHub noticed a similar claim was made by a Twitter page tagged “Africa Facts Zone” with the username @AfricaFactsZone which was also retweeted by SERAP.
THE CLAIM
Nigeria is currently the only country in Africa where Twitter is restricted.
Screenshot of the claim made by SERAP
THE FINDINGS
The Nigerian government on Friday, June 5, suspended the operations of the US-based social media platform, Twitter in Nigeria.
The government said the platform was persistently used for activities that could undermine the corporate existence of Nigeria, hence the need for the suspension.
Prior to the claim, SERAP had earlier criticised the decision of the government to suspend the operation of Twitter, just as it threatened to sue the government for the move.
Data from Access Now, an organisation that tracks internet shutdown and social media censorship across the globe show that Nigeria is the only African country where Twitter is currently restricted.
According to Access Now, Algeria, Burundi, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Togo and Uganda had at one point restricted the use of social media or shutdown the internet in their respective countries. Ethiopia currently has internet shutdown in it’s Tigray region and Uganda has some form of Facebook restriction.
THE VERDICT
The claim that Nigeria is currently the only African country where Twitter is restricted is TRUE.
