Barely five days after the 2023 general elections, a Facebook page that claimed to be the notorious hacking group Anonymous accused Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of corruption.
The page alleged that Yakubu was hosted by Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, who gave the INEC boss $200,000,000 in bits of $50m.
The Post shared on various platforms was to give credence to the numerous rigging accusations attributed to Saturday general elections.
Anonymous is a group of global hackers and activists, who refer to themselves as “hacktivists”. They claim to defend social issues and interests around the world, by hacking government websites and accounts.
It was widely reported in October 2020, that they hacked the Central Bank of Nigeria’s website in a bid to support the #EndSARS movement.
Verification
In verifying the page’s authenticity, CDD Election War Room searched Facebook for the Anonymous page and found various handles with similar names.
Amongst them, was a verified handle with over 11m followers; a further inquiry into the handle showed that the page was registered in 2015, and is handled from the UK.
The handle has not posted anything concerning the elections, thus clearing this handle from our search list.
After several searches, we found the anonymous handle responsible for the post. The handle had a history of political bias as well as football predictions.
As we dug deeper, we found that the page was created in 2022 under the name, Matchscore, it was later changed to “Match corner” and then to Anonymous in November 2022.
Its Facebook transparency information revealed that the page is being handled by six people in Nigeria.
There is also no evidence to support the claim that Tinubu paid the INEC chairman $200 million to declare him the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
Verdict
The claim that Anonymous said Tinubu paid the INEC chairman is false; CDD Election War Room found that it emanated from an impostor page on Facebook.
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