US President Donald Trump may be the boss when it comes to calling out fake news.
But it appears Nigeria has its very own problem with fake news after Heritage Bank’s name was unfairly dragged through the mud.
An online blog, Per Second News, published a story on Monday saying three fraudsters involved in a N150 million scam were employees of Heritage Bank.
It was reported that the three fraudsters were working in cahoots with two members from telco behemoth MTN.
But it wasn’t true because the alleged suspects Oyelade Shola-Isaac, 32, Osuolale Hammid, 40, and Akeem Adesina, 33 “were never staff of Heritage Bank Plc at any time".
A quick online search of the names revealed that none of the names used in the original story had any online presence outside of the fake news story.
It was reported that the suspects gave their fellow fraudsters the bank account details of customers who were not using internet banking.
Find out why Heritage Bank prides itself on safe and secure banking here.
It was alleged that MTN staff would the disable debit notification alerts to the scam victims.
But in an attempt to save face after hours of false articles that would have reached thousands of eyeballs, Heritage Bank, led by MD Ifie Sekibo, issued a statement to correct the lie.
“We wish to make it clear that Heritage Bank disproves the antics of such blogger (Per Second News), who seems determined to discredit the institution, even to the extent of risking being seen clearly as careless and unprofessional,” the statement read.
“We consider it our duty to continue to provide our stakeholders with accurate information where it concerns us, as your confidence and support is of utmost importance to us.”
Speaking to Punch, MTN spokesman Funsho Aina said the pictured suspects were employees of a distribution partner.
"Those paraded today (Monday) at the SFU are not MTN workers. Rather, they are employees of a distribution partner, who runs a connect store,” Mr Aina said.
After Heritage Bank corrected the record blogger Per Second News removed reference to Heritage Bank in its original story and ran a correction, using the Heritage Bank press release.

This is not the first time this has happened. Sahara Reports has been running fake news about Heritage Bank for months. See this article: https://www.qed.ng/heritage-bank-threatens-action-sahara-reports-cbn-takeover-report/#.WZvvMVGGO70