₦airaland Forum

FACT CHECK: Is Dangote Refinery Due For Commissioning Jan 24?

A Twitter user, Mohammed Jammal, posted on his Twitter handle that the Dangote refinery will be commissioned on January 24, 2023. The tweet, which gathered…

https://dailytrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Dangote-refinery-450x300-1.jpg

A Twitter user, Mohammed Jammal, posted on his Twitter handle that the Dangote refinery will be commissioned on January 24, 2023.

The tweet, which gathered over 81,000 views, over 500 Likes and retweets, before it was deleted, was circulated by online blogs and some news media.

The tweet reads, “Aliko Dangote’s $19 billion refinery to be commissioned on January 24, 2023.”

Also, a reputable paper (not Daily Trust) reported the same story, saying the refinery is slated for commissioning on the same day.

Verification

Checks by Daily Trust has shown that there is no official announcement by the Dangote Group on the commissioning.

It only announced that the 650,000 barrel per day refinery would be commissioned before the end of the first quarter of 2023.

Also, the Group head of Corporate Communications at the Dangote group, Anthony Chiejina, told Daily Trust that the reports making the rounds is not true

He said, “The Dangote petrochemical refinery will be commissioned when all arrangements are concluded and a formal announcement will be made to that regard.”

He added that the general public should discard the reports making the rounds.

Verdict: False

About the Dangote refinery

The Dangote integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in the Lekki Free Zone in Lagos, has a capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

the refinery, according to the Group, will also produce Euro-V quality gasoline and diesel, as well as jet fuel and polypropylene is expected to generate 4,000 direct and 145,000 indirect jobs.

It is expected to double Nigeria’s refining capacity and help in meeting the increasing demand for refined petroleum products while providing cost and foreign exchange savings.

It is estimated to have an annual refining capacity of 10.4 million tonnes of petrol.

According to the World Bank, the refinery is expected to boost Nigeria’s external earnings by drastically reducing imports of fuel, contributing to the regional supply of petroleum products.

The majority of the crude for the refinery operations is expected to come from Nigeria, given that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) holds a 20 percent stake in the company on behalf of the federation, but the declining crude output would present a challenge.

The NNPC said it would supply half of the crude required by the plant.

Analysts also believe that when the refinery comes onboard, it will minimally reduce the burden of imports and strengthen Nigeria’s local currency.

Napata77:
Google the topic. Loads of info on vaccine injuries, vaccine deaths.

The world media is covering up the facts because they are all united under Satan.

biosilicon:
The same vaccine that has been killing people. and doesn't actually do anything.

Righteousness2:
So despite all that has happened and is happening to people due to this demonic jab, this people are still talking about this same jab?

This Evil world is so sick.
Come Lord JESUS

Legitmatazz:
Soyinka is one of the problem of dix country. He endorsed d disaster we are facing today

UPDATED: What I said about voting Buhari in 2015 – Soyinka
According to Mr Soyinka, what he said at the time was “do not vote for Jonathan.”

https://media.premiumtimesng.com/wp-content/files/2020/06/cropped-i-would-have-told-wole-soyinka-to-stand-up-daddy-freeze-supports-young-man-who-sent-wole-soyinka-packing-2-1.jpg

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka on Thursday admitted he preached against the re-election of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He, however, added that he urged the youth to mobilise for their candidate of choice.

The professor of Comparative Literature spoke at a press conference in Lagos on Thursday.

Mr Soyinka has been at the receiving end of criticisms from Nigerians amidst rising hardship and worsening insecurity. A lot of Nigerians blame the literary icon for the role he played in the election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

He sought to push back the criticisms, insisting that he never endorsed President Buhari’s candidacy in 2015.

“It is false to say that I supported the election of Buhari,” he said, adding that what he said at the time was “do not vote for Jonathan.”

He admitted that although he didn’t support Mr Jonathan’s second term bid, he now believes the former president “redeemed himself in such a magnificent way.”

DMerciful:
But it is what it is.

How come Soyinka, Falana et all were very critical and vocal during GEJ but under the undisputed heavyweight champion of incompetence and corruption Bubu, they went on ghost mode , even afraid actually.

Chariet:
We all know who steals people's identity

Nigeria elections 2023: How influencers are secretly paid by political parties

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/DD92/production/_128322765_mediaitem128322764.jpg

By Chiagozie Nwonwu, Fauziyya Tukur, and Yemisi Oyedepo
BBC Global Disinformation Team

A BBC investigation has discovered that political parties in Nigeria are secretly paying social media influencers to spread disinformation about their opponents ahead of general elections in February.

The BBC's Global Disinformation Team has spoken to whistle-blowers working for two of Nigeria's political parties, and prominent influencers who have described it as "an industry".

The whistle-blowers say parties give out cash, lavish gifts, government contracts and even political appointments for their work.

We changed their names to protect their identity. "Yemi" is a prominent strategist and "Godiya" a politician.

"We've paid an influencer up to 20m naira ($45,000; £37,000) for delivering a result. We've also given people gifts. Other people prefer to hear: 'What do you want to do in government, be a board member, be a special assistant?'," says Godiya.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1CC8/production/_128186370_godiya.jpg
"Godiya", a politician from one of Nigeria's parties, says influencers have been paid up to $45,000 for delivering a result

Situation rooms are commonplace in the run-up to an election. It's where political parties strategise, develop plans and monitor their campaigns' success. But in the rooms the whistle-blowers described to us, there was another function: following how false narratives assigned to influencers were performing.

Strategist Yemi says fake stories are developed to improve their candidates' chances: "You can deliberately misinform in a suitable way for you."

The BBC has spoken to multiple influencers who have confirmed that payment in exchange for false political posts is widespread.

One influencer who asked not to be named - with almost 150,000 Facebook followers - told us he is paid by political parties to post completely false stories about political opponents. He says he does not do it openly but rather plants false stories through other micro-influencers he hires.

Separately, Rabi'u Biyora is a major influencer known for supporting the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) party.

He told us he was "wooed" by an opposition party to stop promoting the APC's candidate, and give his support to their candidate instead.

Posts on his Facebook timeline confirm he did just that. He told us he did not receive gifts of any kind to do so. But we discovered a Facebook post from 2019 in which he said he received a car and money from a party in exchange for his support on social media.

We put this finding to him, but he stopped responding to us.

Tactics
With an estimated 80 million Nigerians online, social media plays a huge role in national debates about politics. Our investigation uncovered different tactics used to reach more people on Twitter. Many play on divisive issues such as religious, ethnic and regional differences.

In July, influencers widely shared posts associating Kashim Shettima, the APC's candidate for vice-president, with members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

This false narrative gained momentum on Twitter and was shared thousands of times, spilling onto WhatsApp and other platforms.

Using reverse image search, we found that those in the picture with Mr Shettima were nomadic Fulani parents whose children he had enrolled in secular schools in 2017, not members of Boko Haram.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/5A30/production/_128288032_shettima_tweet_false_ok2.jpg
A reverse image search revealed that the men were nomadic Fulani whose children Mr Shettima had enrolled in western schools in 2017 and not Boko Haram members

A month later, influencers promoted a claim without evidence that Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi was linked to, and following orders from, the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) - a separatist movement designated in Nigeria as a terror group. His party denies this.

Those who shared this information included Reno Omokri - special assistant to former opposition President Goodluck Jonathan - who has more than two million followers on Twitter.

When approached for a comment, Reno Omokri said he stands by his accusations, but insists he has not been paid by the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) to campaign on their behalf.

Meanwhile, false claims that the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, fell ill and was rushed out of the country have been shared several times on Twitter.

Godiya, the politician we interviewed, says political parties tell influencers to elicit as much emotion as they can with their paid posts.

"We use images that may not even be relevant to the story we are trying to spin. We can take pictures from East Africa in the 1990s in warzones and attach them to a tweet about how my ethnic group is being killed. When people get emotional they retweet, they like, and it gets traction," she says.

According to the whistle-blowers, the hired influencers are sometimes given an idea that they should frame in their own words. At other times, they are given the actual tweets that need to be published at specific times.

They say influencers are paid based on the number of followers they have. They also say payment happens mostly in cash to avoid a paper trail.

Moral compass
It is not illegal for political parties to hire social media influencers in Nigeria, but spreading disinformation on social media is a breach of the country's laws and Twitter's policy.

The BBC has asked Nigeria's main political parties, APC, PDP, and the Labour Party, about the whistle-blowers' allegations. They did not reply to our request for comment.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/562D/production/_127816022_radiolisteners.jpg
False messages tend to spill offline - travelling from Twitter to news programmes, becoming real conversations on the streets of Nigeria

In response to our findings, Twitter has taken down some of the accounts we reported to them and said it had a responsibility to protect electoral conversations from interference, manipulation, and false information.

However, there are concerns about the platform's capacity to tackle misinformation in Africa after Elon Musk's takeover of the company, when its continental headquarters in Ghana was closed and nearly all its staff fired.

The BBC has reached out to Twitter again after these changes, but received no response.

Idayat Hassan, director at the Centre for Democracy and Development, says the activities of these influencers amounted to "political interference".

"It is undermining trust in democracy, undermining trust in the electoral system, and it is instigating conflict," she says.

But politician Godiya sees it a different way, and defends the tactic: "It is a game. Somebody had to win, and God help me, I will not be on the losing side."

“I never made such a statement. We have warned again and again. The increasingly bastardised social media will eventually set one country after the other on fire, leading eventually to a global conflagration. And the principal instigators will be those malformed subhumans who lack the courage of their conviction and must resort to Identity Theft of mounting impudence.

I never made comment on Northern domination of Nigeria – Soyinka


Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has debunked a quote on Northern hegemony attributed to him by former Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Prof. Bola Akinterinwa.

Soyinka maintained that the ex-NIIA DG has fallen victim “of Nigeria’s fake attribution industry which has now attained hideous social dimensions”.

Akinterinwa, who is also the current Director-General of Bolytag Centre for International Diplomacy and Strategic Studies (BOCIDASS) had in an article published in a national daily quoted Soyinka as saying that Northern Nigeria will continue to control the government no matter who becomes the president because they (North) created a fraudulent constitution and population.

Debunking the quote attributed to him, the literary luminary in a statement personally signed by him on Monday, said he never made such statement, warning that “the increasingly bastardised social media will eventually set one country after the other on fire, leading eventually to a global conflagration”.

Soyinka said: “It is simply unfortunate that Akinterinwa has fallen for the operations of Nigeria’s fake attribution industry, which has now attained hideous social dimensions. The statement attributed to me in his essay is not mine. It belongs to the sharp practices of internet trolls with their own agenda, who however lack the balls to answer their fathers’ names. There is an appropriate name for them, but we shall avoid using it here. The section at issue reads as follows:

“Nothing could be more interesting than what Professor Wole Soyinka was quoted as saying: ‘Northern Nigeria will continue to control the government no matter who becomes the president. This is because they created a fraudulent constitution in Nigeria, fraudulent population in the Northwest and more states in the North.’ More significantly, the African Nobel Laureate from Ogun State also noted that ‘Northern Nigeria was in charge of the government when Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan were president. Even if you make Igbo president, Northern Nigeria will still control the government. The best solution to Nigeria’s problem is for us to negotiate our existence.'”

“I never made such a statement. We have warned again and again. The increasingly bastardised social media will eventually set one country after the other on fire, leading eventually to a global conflagration. And the principal instigators will be those malformed subhumans who lack the courage of their conviction and must resort to Identity Theft of mounting impudence.

“Even the most elementary, but rational, mind-sustaining discourse has become a minefield of distortions, wholesale fabrications, half-truths, tendentious extrapolations that impose on serious thinkers and debaters superhuman navigation skills. I salute those who persist and attempt to retrieve this valuable medium from the mentally retarded minority.

“In this connection, one brief comment: Professor Akinterinwa missed out on one leadership qualification that the nation desperately needs: a mass psychiatrist or an exorcist. Preferably both rolled in one.”

2023 Elections: Nigerian company unveils App to combat fake news

“As we launch the (Run-Am) App today, we will need our citizens that to go beyond exposing those misinformation..."

https://media.premiumtimesng.com/wp-content/files/2023/01/16742969979435375981837864804736-768x570.jpg

Rise Networks, a Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Company, on Friday in Abuja, launched the “Run-Am” mobile app to verify fake news and combat the spread of misinformation during the electioneering period.

Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, founder, Rise Networks, said the platform, which can be accessed on Google Play Store, is a tool capable of ensuring efficiency and accountability of information during the 2023 elections and beyond.

She said that the project had the support of the MacArthur Foundation and the Centre for Information, Technology and Development (CITAD).

According to her, the app has the news verification feature, image verification feature and voter-education feature to check misinformation that may cause violence during elections.

“During elections, fake news is used to create a lot of voter apathy, so you see a lot of news like 50 people have been killed in a particular local government.

“And because of that, people who have their PVCs will not want to come out to vote because they are afraid.

“But when you find out, you will see that that information is not true but when voters do not turn up, that is when it will be easy for them to rig the elections.

“And those are the kind of problems the Run-Am App intend to solve,” she said.

She added that the organisation was working to ensure that the App is run in our local languages and pidgin English, for easy accessibility of all Nigerians.

Victor Aluko, Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appreciated the company for its efforts at combating fake news that may undermine the electoral processes in the country.

“We are going into a serious elections which will be contested by powerful individuals and political parties and you will see a situation where the electoral process will be pulled in various directions.

“When we have that, you will see a lot of combination of fake news, misinformation and disinformation and we are looking at how we can manage our results to make sure that people don’t misinform Nigerians.

“So when we have this type of App (Run-Am), from reputable organisations like this, we tend to identify with them and express our happiness that this is coming from a Nigerian organisation,” he said.

For his part, Dayo Olaide, Deputy Country Director, MacArthur Foundation Africa Office, added that democracy had continued to be faced with global threats across the globe.

He added that to save the country’s democracy, Nigerians must begin to pay more attention to electoral accountability and call out those who make inflammatory statements and spread fake news.

“As we launch the (Run-Am) App today, we will need our citizens that to go beyond exposing those misinformation but begin to demand that those who are driving this type of attack against our democracy are brought to book.

“That responsibility is not only that of INEC, it is a shared responsibility, the government, citizens and also the media must hold all actors accountable for their actions,” he added.

(NAN)

BluePrincee:
The shareholding structure of the Port is as follows: The Lekki Port Investment Holding Inc. (international consortium) owns 75% (China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd 52.50%, Tolaram 22.5%), the Lagos State Government owns 20% while Nigerian Ports Authority owns 5%.


What kind of math is this? All the percentage put together is supposed to be 100% who wrote this na? This is the more you look the less you see😭😏

XAUBulls:
Part of your second paragraph is
FALSE!

Innoson was funded to the tune of millions of Naira by the Nigerian Government-owned BOI. This is the reason why the humble owner of that car assembly coy said in a BOI documentary when he went to collect an award in London less than 10 years ago that, "Without the
Bank Of Industry there will be NO
Innoson." I saw the documentary myself where he gave all the credit of his company success to BOI. Period.


BOI also funded the brilliant
US-trained Engineer, Adetokunbo
Ogundeyin's Iperu Remo, Ogun State-based Proforce Defence
Industries, which is the first company in Nigeria in the late 2000s to manufacture Armored Personel Carriers, the Ara MRAPs, armored boats and vehicles used in the current war on insurgency with some APCs exported to many countries from Ogun State.


Cc: Pakute, hadaydhollarpo

How did you solve the problem of initial capital for motor manufacturing?
I started the motor manufacturing with a little money. I went to Bank of Industry (BoI) to buy machinery. I requested five machines from them, but I was able to buy just one.I started with that one. When I completed the repayment, they bought five more machines. Then after I paid very well for the five machines, they bought 10.

Bank of industry can only give you money if they test you and you are trust worthy; I didn’t know anyone in BOI before I joined. I applied for five machines and they approved only one. But seeing the way I was able to pay the one they approved made them to buy five more. To BoI, everyone is a suspect, because they don’t know anyone until you prove yourself. As at last two months, they have bought for me equipment worth N4 billion.

Did you give them any collateral?
They can’t loan you money without collateral or bank guarantee, because you have an industry. If you don’t have an industry why would you ask for the money? You must have an industry before they can give you a loan.

Ogonimilitant:
You paid N49million for 30 units of buses.
Which is less than 1.3m per bus. This is how you want to patronize your country.

Innoson was founded in 2007
Toyota was founded in 1937
And you want Innosson to be like Toyota. The government of Japan funded Toyota why innoson started and funded itself from the scratch.

The government of Sierra loan bought vehicles from Innosson and have not had any problem but Nigerians instead of supporting their own brand keeps marketing their brand because he is an Igbo man.

Obi is coming and Nigeria shall be great again.

In line with the Buhari administration’s admonition to patronise local industries, the agency had some time in 2021 approached the motor vehicle plant to supply it with a 30-seater bus for its workers.

The agency had paid Innoson the sum of N49.5 million, including taxes, for the purchase of the bus on 17 November 2021.

Even though the Vanguard report failed to mention the former Nigerian heads of state implicated in the scandal, SaharaReporters has learnt that the principal targets are former military ruler Abdulsalami Abubakar and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Mr. Abubakar’s share of the illicit bribe funds, a total of $37.5 million, was wired to him through accounts in the American Express Bank Annex at the Towers World Financial Centre, New York, the Seaway National Bank, Chicago, and the Bank of New York.

Mr. Abubakar, who served as military ruler after the death of General Sani Abacha, operated several bank accounts that period included A/C No 187765 Chips VID 250517 (in the name of Maizubi Holdings, Minna), A/C No 0074952045, Routing Number 071001216, Foundation Inc., A/C No 9800263826 Swift/Sort Code GHBAGRAA001 and A/C No 0039342923-21 Routing Number 052001533.

“Some of us will leave Nigeria if Sowore becomes president” – Abdulsalami Abubakar


A former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd.), has jokingly said that he and some of his contemporaries will flee Nigeria in the event Omoyele Sowore, Presidential Candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), becomes president of the country.

POLITICS NIGERIA reports that during the National Peace Committee (NPC) meeting under the leadership of Gen. Abubakar on Friday in Abuja, the AAC candidate was asked by the former Nigerian leader to “reconcile” with Action Alliance (AA) candidate, Major Hamza Mustapha.

However, Sowore stated that his disagreement was political, adding that “I have issues with all the military people that annulled the June 12, 1993 elections including him (Gen. Abubakar).”

Replying, the elder statement said: “Sowore, you are talking about 20 years ago. By the time you become the president of this country, I think some of us will leave this country.

“I think quite honestly, let bygones be bygones. What has happened has happened. Let’s go on with what is in front of us.”

Pakute:
That has been the challenge both Mikano and Obituary camps have refused to approach the court after claiming to have proofs of Tinubu's engagement in narcotics. Both camps know that such an attempt would amount to making a fool of themselves and massively swing the polls in favour of Tinubu.

“Nobody has done that. He did not even allow the Labour Party, where he is now, to freely campaign in Anambra. He denied them even the venue that they paid for,” he said.

Nigeria elections 2023: How influencers are secretly paid by political parties

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/DD92/production/_128322765_mediaitem128322764.jpg

By Chiagozie Nwonwu, Fauziyya Tukur, and Yemisi Oyedepo
BBC Global Disinformation Team

A BBC investigation has discovered that political parties in Nigeria are secretly paying social media influencers to spread disinformation about their opponents ahead of general elections in February.

The BBC's Global Disinformation Team has spoken to whistle-blowers working for two of Nigeria's political parties, and prominent influencers who have described it as "an industry".

The whistle-blowers say parties give out cash, lavish gifts, government contracts and even political appointments for their work.

We changed their names to protect their identity. "Yemi" is a prominent strategist and "Godiya" a politician.

"We've paid an influencer up to 20m naira ($45,000; £37,000) for delivering a result. We've also given people gifts. Other people prefer to hear: 'What do you want to do in government, be a board member, be a special assistant?'," says Godiya.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1CC8/production/_128186370_godiya.jpg
"Godiya", a politician from one of Nigeria's parties, says influencers have been paid up to $45,000 for delivering a result

Situation rooms are commonplace in the run-up to an election. It's where political parties strategise, develop plans and monitor their campaigns' success. But in the rooms the whistle-blowers described to us, there was another function: following how false narratives assigned to influencers were performing.

Strategist Yemi says fake stories are developed to improve their candidates' chances: "You can deliberately misinform in a suitable way for you."

The BBC has spoken to multiple influencers who have confirmed that payment in exchange for false political posts is widespread.

One influencer who asked not to be named - with almost 150,000 Facebook followers - told us he is paid by political parties to post completely false stories about political opponents. He says he does not do it openly but rather plants false stories through other micro-influencers he hires.

Separately, Rabi'u Biyora is a major influencer known for supporting the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) party.

He told us he was "wooed" by an opposition party to stop promoting the APC's candidate, and give his support to their candidate instead.

Posts on his Facebook timeline confirm he did just that. He told us he did not receive gifts of any kind to do so. But we discovered a Facebook post from 2019 in which he said he received a car and money from a party in exchange for his support on social media.

We put this finding to him, but he stopped responding to us.

Tactics
With an estimated 80 million Nigerians online, social media plays a huge role in national debates about politics. Our investigation uncovered different tactics used to reach more people on Twitter. Many play on divisive issues such as religious, ethnic and regional differences.

In July, influencers widely shared posts associating Kashim Shettima, the APC's candidate for vice-president, with members of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

This false narrative gained momentum on Twitter and was shared thousands of times, spilling onto WhatsApp and other platforms.

Using reverse image search, we found that those in the picture with Mr Shettima were nomadic Fulani parents whose children he had enrolled in secular schools in 2017, not members of Boko Haram.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/5A30/production/_128288032_shettima_tweet_false_ok2.jpg
A reverse image search revealed that the men were nomadic Fulani whose children Mr Shettima had enrolled in western schools in 2017 and not Boko Haram members

A month later, influencers promoted a claim without evidence that Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi was linked to, and following orders from, the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) - a separatist movement designated in Nigeria as a terror group. His party denies this.

Those who shared this information included Reno Omokri - special assistant to former opposition President Goodluck Jonathan - who has more than two million followers on Twitter.

When approached for a comment, Reno Omokri said he stands by his accusations, but insists he has not been paid by the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) to campaign on their behalf.

Meanwhile, false claims that the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, fell ill and was rushed out of the country have been shared several times on Twitter.

Godiya, the politician we interviewed, says political parties tell influencers to elicit as much emotion as they can with their paid posts.

"We use images that may not even be relevant to the story we are trying to spin. We can take pictures from East Africa in the 1990s in warzones and attach them to a tweet about how my ethnic group is being killed. When people get emotional they retweet, they like, and it gets traction," she says.

According to the whistle-blowers, the hired influencers are sometimes given an idea that they should frame in their own words. At other times, they are given the actual tweets that need to be published at specific times.

They say influencers are paid based on the number of followers they have. They also say payment happens mostly in cash to avoid a paper trail.

Moral compass
It is not illegal for political parties to hire social media influencers in Nigeria, but spreading disinformation on social media is a breach of the country's laws and Twitter's policy.

The BBC has asked Nigeria's main political parties, APC, PDP, and the Labour Party, about the whistle-blowers' allegations. They did not reply to our request for comment.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/562D/production/_127816022_radiolisteners.jpg
False messages tend to spill offline - travelling from Twitter to news programmes, becoming real conversations on the streets of Nigeria

In response to our findings, Twitter has taken down some of the accounts we reported to them and said it had a responsibility to protect electoral conversations from interference, manipulation, and false information.

However, there are concerns about the platform's capacity to tackle misinformation in Africa after Elon Musk's takeover of the company, when its continental headquarters in Ghana was closed and nearly all its staff fired.

The BBC has reached out to Twitter again after these changes, but received no response.

Idayat Hassan, director at the Centre for Democracy and Development, says the activities of these influencers amounted to "political interference".

"It is undermining trust in democracy, undermining trust in the electoral system, and it is instigating conflict," she says.

But politician Godiya sees it a different way, and defends the tactic: "It is a game. Somebody had to win, and God help me, I will not be on the losing side."

Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda.[1] The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".[2]

Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops' psychological states.

Timmi:
‘
N390k pere per Nigerians? In the US, it’s $6,430 per each US citizen.

Obidient4life3:
Aboki na aboki. This is what a so called PhD holder went abroad to be discussing? Talking like a typical entitled Almajiri!
A PhD from a northern university is like HND in the south East! North no be the one wey I stay?

Nigeria’s social media fact-checkers fight fake news

Bukola Adebayo, Reuters

Nigerian fact-checker Kemi Busari knew it was a fake when he stumbled upon a video on TikTok showing Hollywood stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey endorsing one of the candidates running for his country’s presidential election next month. “It was obvious ... but there are people that will go to town with it,” said Busari, editor of the Dubawa website that fact-checked the video in November, leading it to be swiftly removed from several major social media platforms.

As online disinformation increases in the run-up to Nigeria’s Feb. 25 poll, some fake news has been harder to spot, however, occasionally leading to its repetition on mainstream news sites and sowing mistrust among voters as the campaign heats up.

“It’s one week, one election disinformation, one political misinformation online,” said Idayat Hassan, director of the policy advocacy group, Centre for Democracy and Development.

“If traditional media can fall prey to disinformation spread on social media, then we should worry that the lines are becoming blurred,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In November, the country’s electoral commission had to deny a false report that it had launched a criminal probe into one of the candidates after a forged statement went viral on social media, leading several major news outlets to repeat the disinformation. Two months earlier, Ghana’s president disowned a fake Facebook post where he purportedly advised a Nigerian presidential candidate to make way for a party rival.

For some of the 93 million Nigerians eligible to vote next month, knowing what is true can sometimes be difficult.

Student Segun Adeniran, 24, said he felt sure of the veracity of a video on TikTok apparently showing a state governor buying a voter’s ID at a camp for displaced people, until he read a report debunking it in January.

“At this rate, I don’t even know what to believe,” he said.

TikTok did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Online disinformation has often muddied the waters of Nigerian elections, but political analysts and digital rights campaigners say the tactics are different this time because there are more platforms where fake news can spread. Hassan said people promoting fake news have become “more sophisticated and organised”, aiming for more eyeballs on their content by posting across social media apps at a pace that is becoming increasingly difficult for citizens to keep up with.

“They can screen grab a fake post on Facebook and share it on Twitter where it’s shared many times, and it goes as a broadcast on WhatsApp,” she said. “By the time (voters) go to the polling unit on election day, they may be making a choice they’re not sure of,” she added.

More than half of Nigeria’s 216 million people are on the internet and it has the highest number of social media users in Africa, with nearly 33 million Nigerians on YouTube and more than 26 million people using Facebook, according to figures from the data monitoring website DataReportal.

Anxious to stop fake news from tainting the election, fact-checkers like Busari have been working round the clock to identify misleading posts and report them to leading platforms that employ them as contractors.

Big Tech firms including Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — and YouTube owner Google have pledged extra resources to curb misleading information linked to the vote.

Meta said it had taken “aggressive steps” online and offline to tackle election misinformation, including working with three independent fact-checkers — Agence France-Presse (AFP), Africa Check and Dubawa — to reduce the visibility and virality of fake news.

“We continue to work closely with election authorities and local partners in Nigeria to ensure we’re preparing for the specific challenges in Nigeria and taking appropriate steps to stay ahead of emerging threats,” Meta’s head of public policy for Anglophone West Africa, Adaora Ikenze, said in a statement. But rights groups and fact-checkers say social media companies must do even more.

Busari said that while Facebook has often acted swiftly in reviewing flagged content, a company policy preventing fact-checkers from working on questionable posts by politicians during an election cycle undermines efforts to stamp out fake news. “If we can’t rate information by politicians, then it makes it difficult for fact-checkers to work with Facebook during this period,” Busari said. Around the world, social media platforms have come under greater scrutiny for failing to tackle election disinformation and abuse recently, from the Philippines to Zimbabwe.

Twitter has faced particular criticism since owner Elon Musk axed half its workforce including the team responsible for preventing the spread of misinformation and abuse, and laid off nearly all its staff in its only African office in Ghana. Busari said British-based Twitter executives held a virtual meeting in November with three fact-checking groups in Nigeria, including his own, to address concerns about election misinformation. “They said they had created a Google spreadsheet where we can flag some of the false information we see on Twitter to them for them to take action,” Busari said. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Hassan said Twitter’s reduced staff presence in the region posed a threat to the control of misinformation on the influential platform. “The absence of a dedicated team at Twitter to monitor Nigeria’s election as it has other elections in Africa, is going to be a challenge,” she said.

Oyedeji’s investigation estimated that the Oyo government could have saved more than N500 million (about US$1.2 million) if it had produced the notebooks at the market rate, instead of awarding the contracts to friends and associates. He also revealed, through a review of the beneficial ownership data, that the companies were owned by the same individual and had existing relationships with the government. In addition, the firms were also officially registered by the CAC on the same day in September — just three months before the contracts were awarded in December 2020.