FACT-CHECK: Is it true Atiku, Shettima are offering cash gifts as Facebook ads claim?

Claim 1: Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is offering N20,000 to Nigerians.

Claim 2: Vice President Kashim Shettima is offering N55,000 monthly grant for Nigerians.

Verdict: Both claims are misleading. Facebook ads are utilising misleading claims as clickbaits.

Full Text:

Separate Facebook ads claimed that two Nigerian prominent politicians are offering citizens cash gift through different schemes.

The high poverty rate in Nigeria makes citizens susceptible to online monetary schemes and scam. The National Bureau of Statistics data reveals that 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2022. This translates to 133 million people.

The viral claims of the monetary schemes have gathered thousands of engagement on Facebook.

Ripples Nigeria observed that while the applications request that people apply via a link, some Facebook users are dropping their account details in the comment sections instead.

Facebook users send account details to claim cash gift.

The posts promoting the schemes that Atiku and Shettima are offering “free N20,000” and “N55,000” cash gifts respectively have gained thousands of comments and likes.

Verification:

Ripples Nigeria observed that the “schemes” are sponsored Facebook ads/posts, influencing many people to fall for the purported schemes.

Atiku, a Nigerian politician and businessman, served as the vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. He contested as the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 elections where he came second.

Further findings revealed that the Facebook page promoting the scheme purportedly by Atiku was created on June 22, 2019 with the name “Townkrya”. It claims to be an “Information Technology company” located in Nigeria; the page is currently running ads — mainly the Atiku sham scheme.

The page has more than five hundred followers and two hundred likes.

On clicking on the link, an application form appears on the landing page, but upon clicking on it, it redirects to another website with the name “blog.alicemagazine.co.uk”.

A collage of the landing page and the page redirected to

While the domain name shows “Alice Magazine”, the post on the landing page is rather promoting “U.S. Visa Sponsorship Opportunities: $100k in 2024/2025”.

Note that thousands of Nigerians are migrating to foreign and African countries due to the socio-economic situation in Nigeria.

Per a recent report by International Organisation for Migration (IOM), The United States, The United Kingdom, Cameroon, Niger, and Italy are the most popular choices for Nigerians seeking opportunities abroad.

The 2024 World Migration Report shows that up to 402,186 Nigerians moved to the United States and 205,773 to the United Kingdom. African top destination countries for Nigerians are; Cameroon (169,600), Niger (154,739) and Italy (103,462).

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Therefore, the sham scheme is redirected to the website to prey on the Nigerians planning to migrate, referred to as “japa” syndrome in local parlance.

Checks using Whois, a verification platform to get information about domains, reveals that the website was registered in 2021 and will expire next year, 2024. Although ScamAdviser, an online tool to check authenticity of a website, shows that the website has a high trust score. Some the website information such as location is hidden.

However, a supposed magazine website promoting a spurious visa scholarship opportunity is suspicious.

Ripples Nigeria found no post related to the claim in mainstream media and on the social media pages of the former vice president.

“Kashim Shettima Programme”

Ripples Nigeria followed the same verification process to check the authenticity of the scheme purportedly by Shettima, vice to incumbent president Bola Tinubu.

Shettima previously served as senator for Borno Central from 2019 to 2023, and as the governor of the state from 2011 to 2019.

We observed that the landing page for the application form is a website, “jobs.spiritualcontents.com”. Further checks revealed the same pattern with the previous website: $85,000 visa sponsorship opportunity. In the “About us” page, the owner of “Spiritual Contents Jobs” claims to provide educational and scholarship opportunities for the year 2024/2025.