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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.
POSTS on Twitter and Facebook claim that German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “democracy under Buhari is one of the best in the world.” There is no evidence that Merkel made any public statement of support for Presidential Candidate Muhammadu Buhari.
CrossCheck Nigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, searched the web and social media platforms in both English and German for any evidence of Merkel’s alleged support for Buhari in the upcoming race. There was none.
We also consulted the German Embassy in Nigeria. By email, the embassy stated that “as far as we are aware, she did not make this statement. Kindly consider as fake news.”
Additionally, there is no evidence that Merkel has thrown her support behind any Nigerian candidate.
The last time Merkel visited Nigeria, in August, her discussion centered on trade and migration.
CCN found the first instance of the misleading claim on a Buhari support page on Facebook titled “ISupportBuhari2019,” and subsequently found the claim was first shared a day earlier – February 3rd – by a Twitter account called @trueNija
As at 5:00 p.m. on February 7, posts of the claim on Facebook, also shared on ‘cupsdemocracyinaction’ page, had garnered over 1000 shares. On Twitter, the claim had over 1,500 shares and 2,000 likes.
On January 29, Facebook user Olutoyoso Omotoso posted a video and captioned it as originating from the USA Centre for Security Studies. This is false.
While the video is genuine, the author had angled the caption in a way that presented the video as a US government scorecard of Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking re-election and finished it off with a CTA. She wrote:
“The USA Centre For Security Studies declares that Nigeria under Buhari is in an SOS ? situation, and recommends immediate intervention before it explodes. Watch and share video pls. Kick out Buhari/Osinbajo.”
As at Wednesday, February 6, 2:13 pm WAT, the video had been viewed 1,300 times and shared by 166 Facebook accounts.
These are our findings:
That there is no USA Centre for Security Studies
That the video first appeared on ‘SecureFreedom’ Youtube page on December 20, 2018, and captioned “Frank Gaffney urges Trump administration to appoint a U.S. Special Envoy to Nigeria/Lake Chad”
That the video was recorded a day earlier at a press conference held in Washington by ‘Save The Persecuted Christians’, coalition to pressure the US Government to intervene in the plight of Christians in Northern Nigeria/Lake Chad by appointing an envoy.
That Frank Gaffney, the man who appears in the video, is the Founder and President of Centre for Security Policy, a US-based not-for-profit. He is also Founder of Save The Persecuted Christians and does not speak for the US government.
CCN then reached out to the Facebook account seeking to clarify the author’s intention in using that caption, her response was: “It was sent to me like that. Pls what’s the right caption so I can edit? Thanks.” We have now provided the author with a link to the original video in hope that the misinformation is corrected.
A quote attributed to the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed that says “We Saw A PDP Membership Card And Atiku Abubakar’s Bank Cheque In The Pocket Of The Pilot That Crashed Our Osinbajo’s Helicopter” is being circulated online. There are also other similar claims that the PDP used Osinbajo’s helicopter for 16 years without servicing it.
CrossCheck Nigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, confirms that this claim is not only misleading but also dubious. Lai Mohammed has not issued an official statement that is related to the Vice President’s helicopter crash of last Saturday.
Shared by one Facebook page, Nigeria News and a Twitter handle @SweetShantel. The two posts on Nigeria News both garnered a total of 314 comments and 343 shares as at 01:39 pm, February 6. The post on @SweetShantel also has the traction of 1,251 retweets and 1,350 likes same time with the post above.
To check this, CCN spoke with the minister’s spokesman, Segun Adeyemi. He denied it and said it is the figment of somebody’s imagination.
“I can tell you categorically that the minister never said anything like that. It must be the figment of somebody’s imagination,” Segun said.
A search for similar publication of this statement on the platform of credible national dailies could not be found.
The helicopter that conveyed Osinbajo and member of his team, crash landed in Kabba, Kogi state on Saturday, February 2, a tweet by Laolu Akande, his special adviser on media and publicity revealed that.
A Vanguard publication reported that Lai Mohammed was in Ilorin, his state capital on Saturday, to commission the state APC secretariat. The highlight of what he said that day according to the report was that Lai Mohammed boasted that the APC candidate would defeat the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and wouldn’t be able to supervise the governorship election in the state.
The question about “We” in the claim; who could he be referring to? Laolu Akande on Sunday, after a thanksgiving service with Osinbajo, said a full investigation into the causes of the incident would be conducted by aviation authorities.
The investigation report has not been made public and as such, the “we” in the statement cannot be trusted.
A Facebook post from Dailymail gist shows the scene of a disrupted event, claiming that locals in Kukara, Taraba had chased out the APC gubernatorial candidate at an event in the village.
The post had garnered an engagement of 319 shares as of 06:35 pm, January 31.
CrossCheck Nigeria confirms that the claim is misleading, as the picture shared in the post is an old Kogi East ADC senatorial rally that was disrupted 10 days earlier.
To check this, CrossCheck Nigeria , a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, google searched some leads in the comment section of the post which led to photographs from a disrupted senatorial rally which had happened earlier.
The report published by one blog,Yes International on January 21, reveals that the picture was that of a Kogi East ADC senatorial campaign, allegedly disrupted by ‘APC thugs’.
A Facebook search for the account of the Kogi East ADC senatorial district candidate also confirms that the picture was shared by a page Dr. Victor ALEWO Adoji 2019 on January 21, at 03:58 pm.
ONE achievement President Muhammadu Buhari is always eager to flaunt wherever he speaks publicly is his administration’s efforts to improve the agricultural sector and boost local crop production.
During his state visit to the United Kingdom in April 2018, he seized the opportunity to boast about the government’s perceived feats to his friend the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the British Prime Minister, Theresa May.
“I am very pleased with the successes in agriculture,” he said to May. “We have cut rice importation by about 90 per cent, made lots of savings of foreign exchange, and generated employment. People had rushed to the cities to get oil money, at the expense of farming. But luckily, they are now going back to the farms. Even professionals are going back to the land. We are making steady progress on the road to food security.”
Again during an interview granted to journalists in January, the president insisted that under his watch Nigeria has “virtually achieved food security”, accusing the media of not fully appreciating the strides.
“We made fertilizer available at virtually half the price we met it, and we are producing it locally. We work together with another African country, Morocco. I’m sure you have felt it. We don’t import rice, virtually, anymore. We don’t import rice, we have stopped importing rice, and we are even exporting grains,” he said.
But the opposition party does not agree with these claims. The People’s Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, said during a town hall meeting on Wednesday that, despite the government’s policies, agricultural output under the PDP was much higher than what the country now has.
In this fact-check we put both claims to test, contrasting them with available figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, which harmonises and publishes statistics from all the federal ministries, departments and agencies, State Statistical Agencies, as well as Local Government Councils (LGCs).
Calculating agricultural output
In assessing output from the agricultural sector, The ICIR mined data from 35 quarterly reports released by the NBS, providing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates four times every year. The agency started releasing the reports at the end of 2011 and has given out data from the first quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2018.
The aim of the reports, also called Quarterly National Accounts or Quarterly Establishment Survey, is to describe the entire system of production in the nation and to provide “a picture of the current economic status of the economy”.
The GDP is used as the “broadest quantitative measure of a nation’s total economic activity; [and] represents the monetary value of all goods and services produced within a nation’s geographic borders over a specified period of time.” And NBS’s quarterly GDP reports contain such information as what percentage of the GDP is contributed by the agricultural sector and the percentage of growth experienced in the sector.
Using the former figure and total monetary value of the country’s real GDP in a particular period, one is able to determine how productive the agricultural sector is, not just in relation to other sectors but in isolation. The sector comprises activities on crop production, livestock, forestry, and fishing.
What the numbers say
Three things should be noted to start with. One, agriculture is a highly seasonaleconomic element, witnessing regular fluctuations in performance due to plant seasons and natural disasters, and it’s been observed that its share in the third quarter is often the highest.
Secondly, in 2014, the NBS revised its current and constant prices using 2010 estimates, which led to a sharp fall in agricultural productivity indices. Before this year, the bureau used estimates from 1990. Because of this, it would be unwise to blindly compare pre-2014 figures and those churned out for the 2014 and later reports.
Finally, though the APC government at the federal level was handed over in May 2015, for the purpose of this fact-check the line between the two administrations was drawn from the first quarter of 2016. This is because policies of the new government cannot reflect immediately following the inauguration, its first budget was not passed until the following year, and then President Buhari did not appoint his cabinet ministers until November, 2015.
Based on this premise, agricultural outputs have slightly increased under the present administration. Numbers mined from 11 quarters of PDP rule show that the average GDP from agriculture was N3.79 trillion, and between 2016 and 2018, the figure has risen to N4.19 trillion.
The average percentage of agriculture’s contribution to the country’s aggregate GDP, in relation to other sectors such as industries and services, has also increased from 22.72 per cent to 24.48 per cent.
It is, however, noteworthy that the tables turn when we consider the average, real growth rate of agriculture, which has dropped from 3.66 per cent to 3.27 per cent.
In the second quarter of 2015 when the PDP handed over, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP, real growth rate, and sectoral GDP were 21.12 per cent, 3.49 per cent, and N3.48 trillion respectively. For the second quarter of 2018, the figures respectively were 22 per cent, 1.19 per cent, and N3.65 trillion.
Conclusion
Based on available data, it is not true that agricultural output was higher before the All Progressives Congress took control of the presidential villa. The claims of the present administration with respect to food security and crop production have also been greatly exaggerated.
ON Wednesday, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and his running mate, Peter Obi, were hosted on The Candidates, a town hall meeting where candidates respond to questions bordering on their capabilities and policies.
It was the programme’s final session, following similar ones in the past where candidates from the Young Progressives Party, Africa Action Congress, and the All Progressives Congress, were also given nearly two hours to share their manifestoes.
In this fact-check, The ICIR takes a look at some of the claims made by Atiku and Obi, and assesses them based on available facts. Meanwhile, it was observed that, following previously published fact-checks, the party’s vice presidential candidate adjusted some of his earlier assertions, which were repeated during the interview.
For instance, during the vice presidential debate organised by the Nigeria Elections Debate Group (NEDG) in December, Obi had mistaken Iraq for Iran as one of two countries below which Nigeria is ranked on the Global Terrorism Index. This error was not made at the recent town hall meeting.
Also, at the NEDG debate, the former Anambra State governor stated that Nigeria’s GDP per capita is “under $1,900” as against $2,500 in 2015. Last week, he increased this figure to “below $2000”.
Atiku: Insecurity was restricted to the Northeast when Buhari came in
“When we come to the issue of security, at the time they [APC] came in the security challenge was restricted to the Northeast. Today, it has spread to two other Northern regions: Northwest and North Central. I don’t think that’s a good performance.”
While, under this administration, terrorist attacks and clashes have taken place, it is not true Boko Haram’s violent attacks were restricted to the Northeast prior to Buhari’s presidency. There are many examples of attacks outside the region under the Goodluck Jonathan-led federal government, for instance.
The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in August, 2011 which left 21 dead and 312 injured, took place in Abuja. Four months after this incident, there was a bomb blast at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, Niger State. In January 2012, there was a series of terror attacks in Kano State, that left at least 185 dead, including 29 police officers. There have also been similar attacks in Kogi and Kaduna states within the period.
Source: Institute of Security StudiesSource: CFR’s Nigeria Security Tracker (NST) and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED)
Atiku: (On the allegations against his wife), she has neither been indicted nor been charged
“The company was fined for a number of offences committed, not necessarily on the issue of my wife’s account. What I can tell you is that my wife has never been indicted and she has never been charged. So there is no way you can hold my wife accountable. My wife is an American, mark you. There is no way they would not have charged her to court or indicted her.”
In the sense that he used the words, “indicted” and “charged”, it may be inferred that Atiku meant to use the former word in the sense not related to the latter, which is to accuse somebody of wrongdoing. Thus, while it is true that Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar, the former vice president’s fourth wife, has not been charged by the United States of America, it is incorrect to suggest that she has not been directly alleged to have violated the law.
While she was in the US, not only were her financial transactions highly suspicious and inappropriate, many times banks questioned the huge amounts of cash flowing to her from offshore corporations sending her funds and decided to close her accounts. Each time, she would open new ones at other banks with the help of her lawyer, Edward Weidenfeld.
Also, in 2008 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged “in a formal complaint against Siemens AG, a German company, that, among other actions, in 2001 and 2002, Siemens wire transferred $2.8 million in bribe payments to a U.S. bank account belonging to Ms. Douglas as part of a scheme to bribe Nigerian officials.” This is according to the 2010 bipartisan report of the U.S. Senate on foreign corruption.
“In response to this and other legal actions, Siemens admitted to engaging in widespread bribery payments, pleaded guilty to criminal violations and settled civil violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and agreed to pay over $1.6 billion in civil and criminal fines,” the report also noted.
“Ms. Douglas has denied any wrongdoing, but the subcommittee has obtained financial records showing the transfer of over $1.7 million from Siemens AG to Ms. Douglas’ account at Citibank.”
Verdict: The claim is misleading.
Obi: Our GDP per capita is below 2000, and GDP in 2015 was $520 billion
“We have heard issue of fighting corruption and the noise associated with it, where you took over an economy that was $520 billion with a per capita for every Nigeria of $2,500, and you abandoned about growing the economy and was busy chasing what seemingly does not exist … and you ended up not recovering even $5 billion, and the economy has lost $120 (something) billion, where now every Nigerian per capita is below $2,000. So we have all lost $500 while you are busy not achieving anything.”
Quoting from a previous fact-check by The ICIR, “Information on the IMF website states that Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in 2015 was $2,763, in 2016 it dropped to $2,207, and it dropped even further to $1,994 in 2017. The GDP per capita, in 2018, has however risen to $2,050, and the IMF projects that it will continue to rise till it gets to $3,317 in 2023.”
Also, Nigeria’s GDP according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2015 was $494 billion, and not $520 billion. Today, the figure has dropped to $397.5 billion, meaning the country has lost $97 billion in economic output, and not over $120 billion as claimed by Obi.
Verdict: The claim is false. Though the vice presidential candidate is closer to the truth than he was at the NEDG debate in December, his claim about the country’s GDP per capita is still slightly inaccurate.
Atiku: Our agricultural output under PDP was much higher
“Our major plan is to create jobs, and the greatest job creation sector in this county is the agricultural sector … In fact the PDP was doing it better. When we introduced the purchase of fertiliser on your mobile phone. Our agricultural output was much higher than the present administration’s.”
A recent study conducted by The ICIR has shown that agricultural outputs have slightly increased under the present administration. It may be deduced from statistics obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics that, under PDP rule, the average GDP from agriculture was N3.79 trillion, and between 2016 and 2018, the figure rose to N4.19 trillion.
The average percentage of agriculture’s contribution to the country’s aggregate GDP, in relation to other sectors such as industries and services, has also increased from 22.72 per cent to 24.48 per cent.
In the second quarter of 2015 when the PDP handed over, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP, real growth rate, and sectoral GDP were 21.12 per cent, 3.49 per cent, and N3.48 trillion respectively. For the second quarter of 2018, the figures respectively were 22 per cent, 1.19 per cent, and N3.65 trillion.
Verdict: The claim is false.
Obi: I never deported beggars from Akwa Ibom
“Never. Somebody deported from Lagos and I challenged it… I never took beggars to Akwa Ibom. In fact, they are welcome because they are citizens of the state. Do you know my wife is from Akwa Ibom? How can I deport people to their state. People from Akwa Ibom are welcome to my state… I have never in my life discriminated against any human being, and I will never.”
Actually, available reports appear to indicate otherwise. According to a Leadership Newspaper report of December 4, 2011, the Anambra state government, under Peter Obi, issued “a warning to all street beggars, especially children used by their parents to beg for alms, to vacate the streets or be arrested”.
“29 of such women who displayed their children as strategy for getting alms have already been arrested in Awka and Onitsha, and repatriated to their home states; Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states,” the report added.
Another report by Champion Newspaper cited by PremiumTimes in a 2013 ‘throwback’ quoted the then Director of Child Development at the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Emeka Ejide, as making similar statements.
Ejide, it reported, said “the Ministry has repatriated more than 29 women begging with children to their various states and would not hesitate to deal with parents who still engage in such acts”. There are no reports of either the Anambra State government or former governor Peter Obi openly denying these reports, until recently.
Verdict: The claim cannot be substantiated using available media reports, and in fact conflicts with such reports.
A number of Facebook posts have shared a photo claiming that the embattled Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, met with the leading opposition presidential candidate, Abubakar Atiku, in Dubai.
CrossCheck Nigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, has confirmed that the claim is false: the photo is mislabeled, and actually shows Atiku meeting with his vice presidential candidate Peter Obi.
In the photo, Atiku is sitting with several men during a meeting. A red circle is drawn around Peter Obi, but the caption misidentifies him as CJN Onnoghen.
The claim was first made by two Facebook pages, “Hausa Press” and “I Will Go Slow And Steady ‘PMB & Nasir El-Rufa’I’” on January 30, 2019.
As of 3:00 pm on February 1, 2019, the post had been shared on two Facebook pages over 450 times and had garnered nearly 200 reactions. Hausa Press has over 157,731 followers while the other page has 56,616 followers.
Upon investigation, CCN found the claim to be misleading and mislabelled for the following reasons:
On October 29, 2018, when the picture was taken and shared on the twitter page of Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, Justice Walter Onnoghen was in Nigeria and not in Dubai as claimed by the Facebook pages.
The person which the Facebook pages referred to as CJN Walter Onnoghen was actually Mr. Peter Obi, the vice-presidential candidate to Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s presidential flagbearer in the coming general election. Obi was seen in same cloth in another photo shared by Senator Murray-Bruce who was also at the Dubai meeting.
The original photo was posted by a serving Senator, Ben Murray Bruce, who was among the Atiku/Obi presidential campaign team during their strategic meeting at Dubai, United Arab Emirate (UAE) by 7:34 pm on October 29, 2018. It has been retweeted 949 times and had garnered 389 comments and 3,686 likes.
NIGERIA’s top two political parties apparently disagree on how much electricity the country is currently generating compared to four years ago when the Buhari administration started.
Speaking in August, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the power sector was no longer where it used to be three years ago when “power generation was the main problem of Nigeria”.
“We were distributing averagely 2,690 megawatts of electricity to Nigerians, but today, that story has changed, distribution has risen to 5,222 megawatts, an all-time national high,” he said at the fourth edition of the Ministry’s retreat for top directors, heads of units and chief executives of agencies and parastatals.
“Transmission has reached 7,000 while generation has reached 7,000. The problem has not finished but all we can say is that, we have made progress,” he added.
Also, in May 2018, while highlighting its many achievements, the presidency stated that its Transmission Expansion and Rehabilitation Programme “has resulted in a 50 per cent expansion in Grid Capacity since 2015, from 5,000MW to 7,125MW as at December 2017”.
In contrast, the opposition People’s Democratic Party, which ruled between 1999 and 2015, has disputed these claims in a recent press statement released by Phrank Shaibu, its presidential candidate’s Special Adviser on Public Communications.
“Talking of infrastructure, despite an ‘investment’ of over N1 trillion by the Buhari-led APC administration in infrastructure, the nation’s roads have become death traps and power generation has actually dipped from 4,949 megawatts PDP left in 2015 to less than 3,500 megawatts even though Buhari’s handlers consistently claim that 7,000 megawatts is what is currently being generated,” he said.
What the statistics really say
The Nigeria Electricity System Operator, a subsidiary of the Transmission Company of Nigeria which operates the transmission system, has been making daily operational reports on electricity generation data publicly available. The reports date back to April 9 2014, and have been uploaded on the agency’s website nearly every day since then.
Each report states the peak and lowest generation of the previous day, the national peak demand forecast, installed generation capacity (of all generating plants), available generation capacity, current transmission capability of all high voltage substations (also called transmission wheeling capacity), network operational capability, peak generation ever attained, among other data.
For clarity purposes, installed generation (or nominal) capacity is the “intended full-load sustained output of a facility such as a power plant and available generation capacity is the amount of electricity a generator produces over a specific period of time, which may vary due to planning, conditions at the power plant or fuel costs.
Also, current transmission capability refers to the maximum amount of electricity transmission lines can transport from the grid to distribution lines, which then wheel to the final consumers; and then the network operational capability shows the actual amount of power consumers can get “per time from the industry through the Distribution Companies”.
It was observed that while the generation from day to day fluctuates easily (making it difficult to evaluate progress based on a day’s figures), other data hardly changed over the years. The national demand forecast which was 14,630MW in 2014, was revised to 17,720MW in March 2016, 19,100MW in February 2017, 22,900MW in October 2018, and then 23,000MW the following month.
Installed generation capacity and available capacity, which initially were 11,165MW and 7,139MW respectively, remained the same over the years, but increased to 12,910MW and 7,652MW in the last week of January.
Network operational capability which has always been 5,500MW increased to 6,500MW in October, 2018, and then 7,500MW in January. In the same period, current transmission capability suddenly rose from 7,000MW to 7,500MW, and then 8,100MW.
The ICIR mined the reports for 60 days, mostly for the first day of each month from April 2014 to January 2019, and observed the trend in actual energy generation under the governments of both the People’s Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress.
On May 29, 2015, when Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as President, the average power generation was 2,948MW (with 3,155MW as the peak generation and 2,741MW as the lowest). On the other hand, on Monday, January 28 (under this administration), the average amount of power generated was 4,056MW, having an increment of 1,108MW compared to what was handed over by the previous government.
Also while 3,313MW is the average energy generated for the 13 months of PDP for which data is available, under the present administration the figure has risen to 3,727MW — a difference of 414MW.
The peak generation ever attained has also increased under the present administration. It was 4,517MW in 2015 when APC came to power but has gradually increased to 5,222MW since December 2017. This, in other words, means that generation has never been up to 7,000MW as claimed in some quarters.
The claim of the PDP that “power generation has actually dipped from 4,949 MW in 2015 to less than 3,500 MW” is false. The average power generated as at May 29, 2015, stood at 2,948 MW, while the average electricity generated as at 2018 by the current administration was 3,313 MW.
Today, these figures have increased to 4,056 MW and 3,727 MW, respectively — a difference of 1,108 MW and 414 MW.
Improvements have also been recorded in the country’s installed generation capacity (from 11,165 megawatts to 12,910 megawatts), available capacity (from 7,139 megawatts to 7,652 megawatts), network operational capability (from 5,500 megawatts to 7,500 megawatts), and transmission wheeling capacity (from 7,000 megawatts to 8,100 megawatts).
It is also not true, as claimed by the APC government and the party’s loyalists, that power generation has increased to 7,000 megawatts. The highest that has ever been recorded is 5,222 megawatts, and even this has not been sustained.
A number of online publications have claimed that leading opposition presidential candidate, Abubakar Atiku, was on Wednesday, January 30, besieged by members of police and men of the Department of State Services in his Abuja residence.
The claim was first made by Hope for Nigeria and later duplicated by Facebook pages Dailymail Gist and Atikulated.
In four hours, the post had been shared on Hope For Nigeria’s Facebook page 499 times with 153 comments while the other pages had lesser interaction. Hope for Nigeria has 682,285 followers.
Upon investigation, CrossCheck Nigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, found the claim to be false and a deliberate hoax for the following reasons:
At the time of the report, Atiku was meeting with businessmen in Lagos whereas the story alleges that he was sieged in his Abuja home.
The report claimed that the ex-VP tweeted about the incident whereas a crawl on Atiku’s Twitter page over the last 24 hours has no such information.
The Hope For Nigeria web article completely plagiarizes an April 23, 2018, Vanguard report titled, ‘Police, DSS take over the residence of Senator Dino Melaye’.
The image used in the story first appearedonlinein January 2016 when the EFCC sealed Sambo Dasuki’s house.
WIDELY shared videos and posts have claimed that the new acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad did not attend law school and was not called to bar.
Fact-checks by CrossCheck Nigeria, a collaboration of newsrooms in Nigeria which includes The ICIR, confirm that the claims are false.
According to the Nigerian Constitution (231), a person must be called to bar before he or she can practice as a legal practitioner in Nigeria.
According to Muhammad’s profile on the websites of the Supreme Court and the National Judicial Council, he studied law at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from 1976-1980 and then at the Nigerian Law School where he was called to bar in 1981.
On January 28, a video shared by the Facebook page “Maiyegun’s Diary Politico”, carried a caption reading: “Buhari appointed a Sharia court judge who was never called to bar or attended law school as Chief Justice of Nigeria.”
In the video a man, protesting President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointment of Muhammad on January 25, claimed that the new Chief Justice was “not even a lawyer” and “had not been called to bar.”
The video has been viewed more than 37,000 times and shared more than 2,400 times. A Facebook page called “Hope For Nigeria” also posted the video which has been viewed more than 4,000 times.
Several posts have repeated the claims.
CrossCheck Nigeria also spoke with a former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ikeja branch, Barrister Monday Ubani concerning the claim. He said: “A lawyer cannot become a magistrate if he or she wasn’t called to bar.” Muhammad began his judicial career as a Magistrate in 1982 with the Bauchi State Judiciary.
Muhammad also served as a Khadi (Judge) of the Sharia Court of Appeal, Bauchi State from 1991-1993.
According to the Nigerian Constitution (276), a person is not qualified to hold office as a Khadi of the Sharia Court of Appeal of a State unless he is a legal practitioner in Nigeria.
A factcheck by The ICIR also reveals how it is not true that Tanko was promoted to the Supreme Court based only on his background as an Islamic scholar.
