A number of posts making the rounds on social media claim that trucks loaded with 40-foot containers were seen taking old naira notes from Bola Tinubu’s house to the bank.
Bola Tinubu is the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor of Lagos.
“Breaking News: ‘8 forty-fit container loads with cash captured leaving Tinubu Lagos House to Bank,” the post reads. This claim was first shared by an imitation page called Daily Trust Hausa on Facebook. It was shared in Hausa and English language.
Another Facebook page, Vanguard Hausa also posted the same report, which has been shared by thousands of Facebook users.
How true are these claims?
Analysing the images using Google Lens, the CDD election war room, found that the picture of the first truck had been on the internet as early as April 28, 2020.
As reported by The Guardian, the image shows truckloads of rice donated by Nigerian Billionaire entrepreneur Tony Elumelu to communities in Delta state.
The second image used in the misleading posts also shows that the truck was from a report published in 2013 by the UN United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries on The Development Economics of Landlockedness.
For the wad of naira notes used in the post, we found using multiple reverse image searches, that the image first appeared on the internet in November 2022.
The image, which was shared by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was published by Daily Trust and Daily Post. The cash was recovered from Ismaila Atumeyi, a candidate for the Kogi State house of assembly.
The final image from the Daily Trust Hausa page is a screenshot from a video that appeared on a number of blogs in late 2022. CDD election War Room tracked the said video to Youtube. The video alleges that a truckload full of rotten N1,000 notes was found somewhere in Nigeria.
Imitation accounts spreading disinformation
The pages Daily Trust Hausa and Vanguard Hausa are imitation accounts notorious for peddling “fake news” and political disinformation. Page Transparency information shows that Daily Trust Hausa was created in August 2022 and has no affiliation with the revered Daily Trust Newspaper.
Daily Trust does publish news in Hausa Language but under the name ‘Aminiya’. Aminiya has a verified Facebook page, which has been running since July 2014.
Verdict
The claims by both ‘Daily Trust Hausa’ and ‘Vanguard Hausa’ are false and malicious. The images do not show trucks carrying old naira notes from Tinubu’s house.
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