FULL STORY A Twitter account with the name of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria @officaialBAT_ on 8th July, 2023, tweeted that the Federal Government has reviewed the case of Ms. Ejikeme Mmesoma who the UTME commission has proven to have forged her result. As tweeted, the user claimed that the president has
FULL STORY
A Twitter account with the name of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria @officaialBAT_ on 8th July, 2023, tweeted that the Federal Government has reviewed the case of Ms. Ejikeme Mmesoma who the UTME commission has proven to have forged her result.
As tweeted, the user claimed that the president has deemed her worthy for Scholarship, stating that he has directed that the candidate, Ms.Ejikeme Mmesoma be given the best education the country has to offer.
The tweet as at the period of check has gained 110k views, 482 Retweets, 96 Quotes, 1331 Likes.
Is it true that the president gave this directive? We check.
Verification
First red flag: We ran a twitter search with the same twitter name for a parody account. The fact that the twitter account did not have a blue thick for official verification was the first red flag that gave the tweet out. The result showed the twitter handle was a parody account. See the twitter handle below:
Second red flag: A closer observation shows that the parody user joined twitter in May 2022, with just 1,205 followers and with a link attached drugbaronandnarcotics.com, which, when clicked, could not be reached, indicating a second red flag.
Fake website
Third red flag: We observed that the Twitter handle of the President has a Twitter verified blue tick. When carefully analysing the difference between the two accounts, we observed that the official username of the President was @officialBAT and not @officialBAT_.
As expected, the official twitter handle of the president must have a verification marker. See the verified twitter handle below:
Verified twitter handle
When we opened it and saw that the handle of the president joined in February 2012, following 22 people, and 2.1M followers.
Finally, we also did checks if there were any similar reports on credible news platforms or the website of the Federal Ministry of Education. There was none of such.
Conclusion: From what we found out, it was observed that the tweet claiming President Tinubu awards scholarship to Ms. Ejikeme Mmesoma was from a parody account.
