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.
A claim that a cultural practice in Namibia which requires a bachelor to be seduced by the sisters of his intending bride has resurfaced on X.
The claim was posted alongside a 20-second footage by an X user, @Africa_Archives.
In the video, two women could be seen twerking on top of a man while songs and drums were playing in the background.
The caption on the post read:
This is a cultural practice in Namibia. A bachelor is seduced by the sisters of his intending bride. If he is aroused, the marriage will not go on because they claim he will cheat on his wife Your comments on this.
The post has garnered more than 13 million views with over 47,000 likes and more than 4,800 reposts. It has also gotten over 2,600 comments and 24,000 bookmarks as of June 5.
The same footage was posted by another X user, @madvidss, with the same claim here.
CLAIM
Video shows a cultural practice in Namibia.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING!
When the video was subjected into keyframes analysis using INVID weverify and Google reverse image search, the results show there exists an earlier version of the footage on YouTube.
Screenshot of the claim retrieved from X. INSERT: MISLEADING verdict.
A look at the YouTube video shows that it is the same video in circulation and it was a compilation of videos from a music festival in Uganda called Nyege Nyege. It was uploaded in 2019 by Value Farm, a farm management company in Uganda.
The Nyege Nyege Music Festival is a four-day electronic music festival held annually in Jinja, Uganda. It features a diverse line-up of artists from Africa and around the world, showcasing a wide range of genres, including techno, house, kuduro, and afrobeat etc.
Further online search using the keywords ‘Namibia Cultural Practice Bachelor’ shows that the claim had been previously debunked in 2021 by AFP fact-check when it first surfaced on the internet.
Another keyword search on the words ‘Namibia Traditional marriage rites for bachelors’ led our fact-checker to a peer reviewed article on intech.open titled “Marriage Practices of the Masubiya: Past and Present.”
In a part of the journal, it noted that before the encounter with Europeans, it was customary for a man to marry a child by making arrangements with the parents of the child while she was still in the mother’s womb or too young to marry. When a girl received her first menstruation (kufulumana), she was kept in isolation (chikenge) for some period of time where she would be taught a lot of things. This often resulted in young girls marrying men twice their age. These practices are now uncommon.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows a cultural practice in Namibia is MISLEADING; the video was taken at the Nyege Nyege music festival held in Uganda in 2019.
A video showing the reinstated Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, speaking on the failure of the Nigerian government to address various problems bedevilling the country has resurfaced online.
In the footage, Sanusi urged Nigerians to get involved in governance and hold politicians to account. The video is being circulated with a claim that he delivered the speech after his reinstatement.
An X user, @Row_Haastrup posted the video with a caption thus:
“Powerful speech by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi after being reinstated as Emir.”
The post has garnered over 145,000 views with more than 1,400 reposts and over 2,500 likes as of June 5, 2024.
CLAIM
Video shows Sanusi delivering a speech after his reinstatement as Emir of Kano.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING.
Screenshot of the viral post as retrieved from X. INSERT: Misleading verdict.
There has been uproar regarding the emirship position of Kano following the move by the Kano State governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf, to reinstate Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Emir.
The ICIRreported that Ado Bayero was dethroned as Emir of Kano along with four other emirs on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Sanusi was, however, reinstated as the Kano emir the following day. The matter is still pending in court.
A Google reverse image search on the keyframes in the video shows that the footage has been online since 2022.
An earlier version of the video showed that the video depicts Sanusi’s speech at the launch of a stage play titled “Emir Sanusi: Truth in Time” held in August 2022 in Lagos.
The play was written by a professor of Drama at the Redeemer University, Ahmed Yerima, and produced by the Executive Chairman, Duke of Somolu Productions, Mr Joseph Edgar.
Speaking at the event, the former CBN boss said that if Nigerians fail to fight the high level of abnormalities in the country, the country might cease to exist in no distant time.
According to him, Nigerians should not allow politicians to intimidate them, regardless of whether they are presidents or governors.
Part of his words reads: “We cannot be intimidated by somebody because you are a president or governor, and we cannot tell you that you are wrong.
“We have chosen different paths. If I had gone into politics, at least given the people that have access to be president in Nigeria, I could have become president or a governor.
“By the time these guys finish with us, our children will not have anywhere to call a nation. The only way to retrieve our nation and give our children the future they deserve is, if you are not in politics, you must hold those in politics to account.
“It is not a comfortable situation to be in. When people are incompetent and don’t like you, you wear their dislike as a badge of honour. You can’t be comfortable and feel normal in a distorted environment.”
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows Sanusi delivering a speech after his reinstatement is MISLEADING; the video has been online since 2022.
OpenAI has announced that it disrupted covert influence campaigns originating from Russia, China, Israel and Iran.
The artificial intelligence (AI) company disclosed in its report titled: “AI and Covert Influence Operations: Latest Trends” published recently.
The report suggests that recent influence operation (IO) campaigns leveraging generative AI lack sophistication and have had minimal public influence.
OpenAI uses the information discovered in its investigations of offending accounts to share threat intelligence with others in the industry and improve its safety systems to combat threat actor tactics. The AI company has also terminated the accounts involved in the malicious campaigns.
The five case studies presented in the report involved threat actors from Russia, China, Iran and Israel. The report uses the Breakout Scale to gauge the impact of each campaign, with none of the described AI-facilitated campaigns receiving a score higher than 2 out of 6.
Two Russian campaigns, dubbed “Bad Grammar” and “Doppelganger” were observed attempting to sway public opinion in favor of Russia and against Ukraine using fabricated personas.
‘Bad Grammar’ and ‘Doppelganger’ largely generated content about the war in Ukraine, including narratives portraying Ukraine, the United States, NATO and the European Union in a negative light, OpenAI stated.
Spamouflage generated text in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean that was critical of prominent critics of Beijing, including actor and Tibet activist Richard Gere and dissident Cai Xia, were observed and those that highlighted abuses against Native Americans, it added.
International Union of Virtual Media generated and translated articles that criticised the US and Israel, while Zero Zeno took aim at the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees and “radical Islamists” in Canada, OpenAI said.
The final case study was on a campaign dubbed “Zero Zeno” that OpenAI identified as being run by an Israeli political campaign management firm called STOIC. The campaign involved AI-generated social media posts across multiple platforms attempting to sway opinion on a range of topics including the Israel-Hamas war, U.S. involvement in Middle East conflicts and Indian politics. The campaign leveraged numerous fabricated identities, including profile pictures that appeared to be created using generative adversarial networks (GAN) that were reused across multiple accounts.
The report showed how OpenAI uses a variety of methods to combat covert IO campaigns such as those outlined in the case studies.
The company uses its own AI-powered models to improve detection of potential adversarial uses of its services, better enabling it to investigate harmful campaigns and terminate offending accounts.
OpenAI emphasized the “importance of sharing” what it learns from real-world misuse with industry peers and the public.
OpenAI’s investigations also built on information shared by other companies and researchers, such as information about the Doppelganger threat actor by Meta, Microsoft and Disinfolab, and articles about Iranian IOs from Mandiant and Reuters.
“Overall, these trends reveal a threat landscape marked by evolution, not revolution. Threat actors are using our platform to improve their content and work more efficiently. But so far, they are still struggling to reach and engage authentic audiences,” the report noted.
A graphic video showing young men being set ablaze on the street after being beaten by mobs has surfaced online with a claim that it shows Igbos from Nigeria being killed for using people for money rituals in Mozambique.
An X user, Ogonna Ezeka (@EzekaOgonna) posted the 30-second video with a caption that read:
“This happened in Mozambique killing the igbos there for using the citizens for money rituals.”
Another verified X user, @nononsensezone, reposted the same video with another caption thus:
“Damn. I just watched this video. It has to be one of the most inhumane videos have ever seen. Igbos is not every country you lot need to visit.”
The video has been circulated widely on X (formerly Twitter).
CLAIM
Video shows the killing of Igbos over money rituals allegation in Mozambique.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING.
The Igbo people are one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria, concentrated in the southeast around the Niger River. They can also be found in the South-South part of the country.
The FactCheckHub subjected keyframes in the viral video to a Google reverse image search and the result shows that it has been online since April 2023.
Similarly, the incident in the footage, which has nothing to do with Igbos or money ritual, occurred in Haiti and not Mozambique.
An earlier and longer version of the exact video was published by Krudplug.net on April 25, 2023. It was also posted here by Daily Mail.
According to media reports, the 13 suspected gang members were beaten and burnt to death with gasoline-soaked tyres in the Republic of Haiti.
Haiti National Police explained that officers in the city’s Canape Vert section stopped and searched a minibus for contraband and had confiscated weapons from suspects before they were “unfortunately lynched by members of the population.”
A resident who spoke to Associated Press (AP) recounted that members of the crowd took the suspected gangsters away from police, beat them and stoned them before putting tyres on them, pouring gasoline over them and burning them.
According to AP, the suspects involved were believed to be members of the Kraze Barye gang, which translates to “Breaking Barriers,” which is allegedly led by Haitan gang leader, Vitel’Homme Innocent.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows the killing of Igbos over money rituals allegation in Mozambique is MISLEADING; the video has been online since April 2023 while the incident occurred in Haiti and unrelated to money rituals or the Igbos.
*TETFUND JOB RECRUITMENT 2024/2025 PORTAL IS OPEN*.
Click on the link below to start your registration now.
*SALARY RANGES*
For *OND* Holders (₦40,000-₦55,000).
For *NCE* Holders (₦55,000-₦70,000).
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For *BS.c* Holders (₦100,000-₦180,000).
*APPLY HERE*
https://lnkshk.com/Tetfund-recruitment-portal.ng
CLAIM
TETFund opens portal for 2024/2025 job recruitment.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by our fact-checker show that the claim is FALSE, as the information is a phishing scam.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) was originally established as Education Trust Fund (ETF) by the Act No 7 of 1993 and as amended by Act No 40 of 1998. It has been repealed and replaced with Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act 2011.
Screenshot of the phishing TETFund website directing users to apply for a job placement.
The TETFund is an intervention agency set up to provide supplementary support to all level of public tertiary institutions with the main objective of using funding alongside project management for the rehabilitation, restoration and consolidation of tertiary education in Nigeria.
A click on the web link redirects you to another website: https://tetfundjobs.shtnarz.com/ which displays a picture of the current Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, with a prompt to fill in the online form that follows and then click an icon below to proceed with the application.
Screenshot of the phishing website showing a “Registration is ongoing” webpage when applying for the job, including social comments from other ‘users’.
When the icon is clicked, it then takes users to another interface that shows “Registration is ongoing” with a prompt that reads:
“Your Application for the ongoing TETFUND JOB RECRUITMENT 2024/2025 Is now on process, Kindly Validate Your detals to proceed to the next step.
Note!!! The Number Of Applicants is limited”
Then followed with an icon to click on continue.
Once a user scrolls down, the user will see a series of Facebook comments from alleged candidates who have been shortlisted after submitting their applications.
Once the user clicks on continue, the next interface is where the user is asked to input their course of study and educational status, then an icon to click on “send”, which is possibly the final submission button.
Screenshot of a webpage from the phishing site asking users to input their course of study and educational status.
After click the ‘send’ icon, users will be taken to another webpage where they are asked to click on the share button and share it with 5 groups or 15 friends on WhatsApp, noting that doing so will ensure users get a confirmation response via email or SMS within three days.
Screenshot of the webpage that asks users to share to multiple WhatsApp contacts.
Thorough checks on the alleged TETFund recruitment website also revealed typographical errors on the webpage as shown below:
Errors and unrelated texts are highlighted in RED from the webpage’s screenshot.
This is a feature synonymous with most phishing scamsThe FactCheckHub has debunked over the years, as they harvest people’s details to carry out phishing attacks.
Screenshot of the disclaimer on TETFund’s website.
Furthermore, a check on the TETFund handles on major social media platforms, especially X and its website revealed that there’s no news of any ongoing job recruitment in the agency.
Rather, the agency had earlier in April 2024 issued a disclaimer with the screenshot of the viral job recruitment on its website’s homepage and X as seen here, though the WhatsApp message is still circulating as recent.
THE VERDICT
The claim that TETFund opens portal for 2024/2025 job recruitment is FALSE; the WhatsApp broadcast is a phishing scam aimed at baiting users to reveal their personal details for likely phishing attacks.
A video showing a former commissioner of Police in Zamfara State, Ayuba Elkana, confirming the receipt of a threat letter from suspected bandits, directing Christians to close down churches has resurfaced on social media.
The video is being recirculated alongside claim that the bandits asked the churches across Nigeria to close down.
The video has been forwarded multiple times on WhatsApp.
“Bandit have sent threat letter asking all churches in Nigeria to close down, that they own Nigeria and they want to takeover their country back. Let’s be careful and security conscious please,” the viral message read.
CLAIM
Bandits order Nigerian churches to close down recently.
THE FINDINGS
Checks show that the claim is MISLEADING.
A keyword search on the internet showed that the video has been online since 2021.
An earlier version of the video which was shot by AIT showed when Elkana briefed the press on November 30, 2021 in Gusau, Zamfara State confirming receiving a threat letter sent by suspected bandits instructing churches in Zamfara to close down for three years or risk being attacked.
Screenshot of the viral broadcast message circulating on WhatsApp.
The bandits had written to the Christian community in Zamfara informing them of their intention to attack churches in the state.
The police commissioner confirmed that the letter was dropped at the entrance gate of the state’s police command by unidentified person.
He clarified that the threat letter listed some churches in the outskirts of the state’s capital that would be attacked during church activities before the end of 2021.
He assured the residents that the police were going to deploy adequate security to all churches and mosques during prayer sessions and services.
THE VERDICT
The claim that bandits recently sent letters to Nigerian churches instructing them to shutdown is MISLEADING; the video has been online since 2021.
The tools, namely the DUBAWA Audio Platform and Chatbot, come at a critical time when misinformation continues to spread rapidly as more users gain access to the internet, especially in Africa.
The launching is part of a two-day CJID Journalism, Digital Tech and AI Dialogue conference holding in Abuja which will bring together journalists, media professionals, tech experts, and civil society organizations.
At the conference, CJID, through its fact-checking platform DUBAWA, will unveil the tools aimed at empowering journalists, researchers, and the general public to combat misinformation and access reliable information. The development of these tools was made possible with the support of the Google News Initiative, a statement from the CJID noted.
DUBAWA Audio is an AI-powered tool deployed to facilitate the claim-sourcing aspect of the fact-checking process. As such, this tool was carefully designed to automatically listen to your radio programmes, transcribe them and extract verifiable claims, saving journalists, researchers, fact-checkers and other users valuable time.
In addition, the DUBAWA Chatbot was built to provide answers to everyday questions regarding viral misinformation and disinformation in the information ecosystem. It is useful in reducing the spread of harmful and misleading content online, providing results and references on a range of topics from credible sources.
Speaking about these tools, CJID’s Innovation Lead, Monsur Hussain, said the Dubawa Audio is developed for journalists to stay on top of misleading claims being propagated to millions of people daily via Radio.
“Also, detecting and taking action against disinformation channeled through social messaging apps presents significant challenges. By making this chatbot available to users via a WhatsApp chat, we aim to fight misinformation spread on the platform,” he added.
The event, titled “Navigating digital disruption, leveraging the power of AI, and securing the vitality of the media,” will be held on May 27th and 28th, 2024.
“The conference aims to address the challenges and opportunities presented by rapid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in the media landscape.
“Through keynote speeches, panel discussions, case studies, and interactive sessions, participants will explore strategies for navigating digital disruption, harnessing the power of AI for journalism, and ensuring a strong and vibrant media ecosystem.
“This event is particularly timely in Nigeria as the media struggles with the complexities of the digital age,” part of the statement read.
A new report by News Guard has revealed that over 700 posts declaring their intention not to re-elect the incumbent president of the United States, Joe Biden, on X are from fake accounts.
This finding was part of NewsGuard’s Reality Check report which examines how online misinformation is undermining trust and identifies the culprits behind it.
According to the report, the campaign began as an authentic, anti-Joe Biden trend on X with real people posting their headshots, providing a little personal information, and declaring that they will “not be voting for Joe Biden” but it was hijacked by swarms of inauthentic accounts primarily of young women.
“From May 5 to May 10, 2024, NewsGuard identified 739 nearly identical X posts with a recurring format: “Hi. I’m [name]. I’m [age] and live in [state] and I will NOT be voting for Biden,” each featuring a supposed personal photo,” the report stated.
Even though there were dozens of posts that were confirmed to be from legitimate users, News Guard found 739 posts that typically showed signs of inauthenticity, such as using a photo of a person with a different name than the one listed on the account, claiming to be a U.S. voter while the user’s bio listed a different country, or having a voter name in the post that did not match the name on the user’s profile.
“For example, “Amelia” claimed to be a 35-year-old U.S. voter. However, a reverse image search of her photo revealed that “Amelia” isactually a Russian woman named Irina Krasniak. Krasniak told NewsGuard in an Instagram message that she was not aware that her photo had been misappropriated,” part of the report stated.
“Tina Davis” from Illinois misappropriated the photo of Tatiana Batir, whose Facebook profile says she lives in China.”
Other accounts that joined in on the trend appeared to be using AI-generatedimages of youngwomen.
According to a social media analytics tool used by NewsGuard, 53 of the fake anti-Biden posts were amplified by accounts based in Russia, with additional amplification from accounts in Poland, Nigeria, Brazil, India, Turkey, and Azerbaijan showing that the campaign was promoted globally, not just within the U.S.
AN X user, @Row_Haastrup, has made multiple claims regarding Islam’s influence in the United Kingdom.
In the social media post, the X user claimed that there are nine mayors in the UK who are Muslims by religion with over 3,000 mosques, more than 130 Sharia courts and over 50 Sharia Councils in England, thus showing significant propagation of the Islamic faith in the UK.
The post read:
“The Mayor of London is a Muslim.
The Mayor of Birmingham is a Muslim.
The Mayor of Leeds is Muslim.
The Mayor of Blackburn – Muslim.
The Mayor of Sheffield is a Muslim.
The Mayor of Oxford is a Muslim.
The mayor of Luton is a Muslim.
The Mayor of Oldham is Muslim.
The Mayor of Rochdale is Muslim
All of this was achieved by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England, which is just 6% of the total population
Today there are over 3,000 mosques in England. There are over 130 sharia courts.
There are more than 50 Sharia Councils.
78% of Muslim women do not work, and receive state support + free accommodation. 63% of Muslims do not work, and receive state support + free housing.
State-supported Muslim families with an average of 6 to 8 children receive free accommodation.
Now every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam.
I guess the UK will be Islamized before Nigeria is. LOL”
The claim has garnered over 1 million views, with about 5,000 likes, more than 1,800 reposts and almost 1,000 comments as of May 20, 2024.
The FactCheckHub examined the veracity of some of these claims as shown below:
CLAIM 1
The mayors of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale are Muslims.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by The FactCheckHub show that this claim is MOSTLY FALSE.
Screenshot of the claim as retrieved from the X post. INSERT: False verdict.
There are two types of mayors in England and Wales – elected (Mayor) and civic (Lord Mayor).
A directly elected mayor and a cabinet are one of three different ‘political management arrangements’ available to local authorities: the others are a leader and cabinet, and the traditional ‘committee system’, where decisions are made by policy committees and approved by the full council.
Lord Mayor or Civic Mayor carries out a ceremonial role and he is normally the chair of the local authority, not its leader or part of its executive. The legislation described in this briefing does not affect this type of office. A small number of mayoral authorities, such as Tower Hamlets and Lewisham, have renamed their chair the ‘Speaker’ to distinguish the roles more clearly. Parish and town councils may also choose to style the chair of the authority as ‘town mayor’. This too is a ceremonial role and does not have executive leadership responsibilities.
Checks by The FactCheckHub show that there are just 24 elected mayors (local authority and metro) in England (See APPENDIX 1 & 2).
Only London and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (which includes Sheffield) have elected mayors. Thus, the other alleged mayoral positions in Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, Rochdale do not exist, as they are not among the elected mayors.
Findings show that while the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is a Muslim, Oliver James Coppard, a Jew, is the mayor of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority of which Sheffield is a part.
This also contradicts the claim that these mayors were voted by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England, as there is no way they could have been voted into a position that does not exist.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the mayors of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale are Muslims is MOSTLY FALSE; findings show that only the mayor of London is a Muslim and seven other areas apart from Sheffield do not have elected mayors.
CLAIM 2
There are 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub revealed that the claim is FALSE.
A part of the claim as retrieved from the X post. INSERT: False verdict.
Checks by The FactCheckHub on the website of the UK’s Office of the National Statistics (ONS) show that as of the last census that was held in England on March 21, 2021, the size of the resident population in England and Wales was 59,597,300 (56,489,800 in England and 3,107,500 in Wales) This is against the 66 million people alleged by the claimant.
Also, further checks on the ONS website showed that there are 3.9 million people who indicated their religion as Islam in the 2021 census and this amounts to Muslims making up the 6.5% out of a population of 59.6 million in England and Wales.
It’s paramount to note that religion is an optional question on the England and Wales censuses; consequently, there is more uncertainty about the figures. Also note that these data are for England and Wales as against the post that specified England as the country under discussion.
THE VERDICT
The claim that there are 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England is FALSE; available data from the UK’s Office of National Statistics show that the total population of England is 56.5 million, with 3.9 million indicating their religion to be Islam.
CLAIM 3
There are over 3,000 mosques in England, over 130 Sharia courts, and more than 50 Sharia Councils.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.
A part of the claim as retrieved from the X post. INSERT: False verdict.
There is no definitive data in the UK that shows the total number of mosques in the UK, as the “Office of the National Statistics” does not count how many mosques or other places of worship there are in the UK.
But checks by The FactCheckHub show that as of December 26, 2023, there were 2,148 UK masjids/mosques, prayer rooms, and shared places such as hired halls and chaplaincies landmarked and 1,149 other locations e.g. proposed or no longer used, according to MuslimsInBritain.org which maintains an unofficial directory of mosques in the UK and Ireland.
Also, in 2020, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said, in written evidence to the Lords Public Services Committee on the subject of lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, that there are “about 1,200 mosques” in Britain. The MCB is a national umbrella body with over 500 mosques, educational, charitable associations and professional networks affiliated to it.
Sharia councils, also erroneously called Sharia courts in the UK, are usually a group of local religious scholars who advise on Islamic marriage and divorce, following Muslim religious rules. While Sharia is a source of guidance for many Muslims, Sharia councils have no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales. Thus, if any decisions or recommendations are made by a Sharia council/court that are inconsistent with domestic law (including equality policies such as the Equality Act 2010), domestic law will prevail, according to a 2018 Home Office review.
In the review on reports into Sharia law in the UK, the document stated that “Common misconceptions around sharia councils often perpetuate owing to the use of incorrect terms such as referring to them as ‘courts’ rather than councils or to their members as ‘judges’. These terms are used both in media articles but also on occasion by the sharia councils themselves. It is important to note that sharia councils are not courts and they should not refer to their members as judges…”
The same document estimated that there were between 30 and 85 of such Sharia councils in England and Wales, and none in Scotland.
THE VERDICT
The claim that there are over 3,000 mosques in England, over 130 Sharia courts, and more than 50 Sharia councils is FALSE; available data show that the numbers are not correct.
CLAIM 4
Every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam.
THE FINDINGS
Checks by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.
A part of the claim as retrieved from the X post. INSERT: False verdict.
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that “schools have to teach Religious Education (RE) but parents can withdraw their children for all or part of the lessons,” according to the UK government’s national curriculum on compulsory subjects.
Pupils can also choose to withdraw themselves once they’re 18. Local councils decide the RE syllabus, but faith schools and academies can set their own.
This shows that different forms of religious studies can be taught in UK schools using the RE syllabus, and not just Islam.
THE VERDICT
The claim that every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam is FALSE; only RE (Religious Education) is compulsory and not Islamic studies.
EDITOR’S NOTE
UPDATES: Following the conversation this report has generated especially in the comment section, we’ve reviewed part of the claims earlier debunked in May 2024. Here are the updates as of Monday, April 14, 2025 below:
An X user, @IamThatNaijaGuy, has claimed that the Lagos – Kano railway cost $2.6billion in Nigeria.
He made the claim in a social media post in comparison with a railway project in China which is claimed to be the fastest train in the world.
The claim was posted alongside two footages – one being that of the alleged Chinese railway project and the other representing the Nigerian railway project.
The first video which is about 126 seconds showcases an electromagnetic train in China which is claimed to be the fastest in the world and built for $1 billion dollars.
Included in this video is a cutaway footage of US President Joe Biden commenting on the Chinese rail.
Part of the audio transcription of the footage goes thus:
This is the fastest train in the world, before I always thought the fastest train was in Japan but after some research I discovered that the Maglev train in Shanghai is in fact the world’s fastest train.
Joe Biden speaking: Realize the Chinese are now building another high speed rail line will go up to 300 miles per hour saving tens of millions of barrels of oil, cleaning up the air, is’nt that hyperbole, it’s a fact.
Yeah, you heard that right, President Biden is on point. welcome aboard the Shanghai Maglev, the road runner of trains. Forget what you knew about speed, this technological masterpiece is here to redefine the notion of fast costing a jaw dropping sum of $ 1 billion, the Shanghai Maglev is not just a train, it’s a bullet slicing through the air, at a mind boggling maximum test speed of over 1000 km per hour. Hold on to your hats, because when it comes to operational speed, this train zooms at a breathtaking 431 km per hour and 268 miles per hour earning itself the title of the world’s fastest ground transportation in the Guinness world records…
The second video which is about 128 seconds also showcasing an operational rail line in a part of Nigeria. A voice could be heard in the background saying: 2LL rail exiting Minna now, 15:51 hours, while murmurs of ‘safe journey’ could also be heard in the background. The video captured all the rail coaches till the last coach.
Both footages were posted with a single caption that read:
Frame 1: $1 billion railway project in China dubbed the as the fastest train in the world Frame 2: $2.6 billion Lagos-Kano railway project in Nigeria.
The post has garnered over 200,000 views with over 1,000 likes, more than 700 reposts and over 160 comments as of May 20, 2024.
CLAIM 1
The Shanghai Maglev train costs $1 billion and it is the fastest train in the world.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MOSTLY TRUE!
The Shanghai Maglev, also known as the Shanghai Transrapid, operates at a maximum speed of 460km/h and average speed of 251km/h. The service runs on the 30.5km Shanghai Maglev Line and isn’t a conventional high-speed model. It utilizes electromagnetic force to levitate above the track, eliminating friction and allowing for incredibly smooth and quiet travel.
These features earned it the fastest Maglev train in regular public service in the Guinness World Records (GWR) in 2003.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Maglev high-speed train cost $1.4 billion, whereas another article by Trip.com reported that the construction cost $1.2 billion.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the Shanghai Maglev train costs $1 billion and it is the fastest train in the world is MOSTLY TRUE; the Maglev train was named the fastest train in regular public service by the Guinness World Record in 2003 and it costs over $1 billion.
CLAIM 2
The Lagos – Kano railway project costs $2.6 billion in Nigeria.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE.
Further checks revealed that the second footage was taken at the re-opening of the narrow gauge Lagos – Kano rail line in January 2024 as seen in another version of the video uploaded by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) on YouTube.
Screenshot of the claim as retrieved from X. INSERT: False verdict.
The train was leaving Minna on a test run as reported in the video after being nonoperational for two years due to ongoing repairs, media reports stated.
In 2006, CCECC was given the $8.3 billion contract for the Lagos-Kano train. However, the project could not be carried out because of financial difficulties.
In 2017, Premium Times and other media houses reported that the Nigerian government secured $7.5 billion loan from a Chinese bank for the construction of the standard rail gauge from Lagos to Kano.
The then Nigerian minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi ,noted that $1.4 billion of the loan was for the construction of the rail gauge from Lagos to Ibadan, while $6. 1 billion would be used on Ibadan–Ilorin–Minna-Kaduna– Kano line.
In November 2018, the minister noted that the standard gauge rail line would cost a sum of $11 billion adding that the Nigerian government is rehabilitating the narrow gauge rail lines to enable the trains shuttle between the south and the northern part of the country pending the completion of the standard gauge.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the Lagos – Kano railway project cost $2.6 billion in Nigeria is FALSE; while a sum of $7.5 billion loan was approved for the standard gauge project, the then minister noted that it cost more.
