By Gbadegesin Adeyanju

Claim

A circulating post claimed that the National Population Commission (NPC) is recruiting ADHOC staff for the Nigeria 2023 census.

The post which was circulating (as received on April 1, 2023 ) with a registration link attached (https://cutt.ly/npc-recruitment), was being shared through WhatsApp groups saying that NPC wants to fill the shortage of staff.

We checked other social media platforms to trace how viral and widely circulated the link had gone. On Twitter, some users had posted the same NPC registration link here, and here.

On Facebook, we found the same claim by some users here with 8 comments, 2 shares,  and 2 likes, and here.

ROUNCHECK went further to verify the authenticity of the claim.

About National Population  Commission

The National Population Commission (NPC) was formed in 1979 to be responsible for collecting, collating, analyzing and publishing data about the population of Nigeria.

The commission has been in existence for over 4 decades and has its responsibility stated in section 153 (J) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The first census conducted by the Commission that covered the whole of Nigeria was in 1962/1963, while the last national census was in 2006.

However, NPC has announced its plan to conduct a census in 2023 through digital means. Nasir Isa Kwarra is the chairman of the commission.

ROUNDCHECK findings

After receiving the claim, ROUNDCHECK visited the website and followed all the processes (with a pseudonym). But one can skip the first step, which asks for personal information like name, email, address, phone number, and country.

The first red flag was that the application link had a URL with ‘.365clue.com‘. That cannot be a government website.

On the next page, applicants were asked to share on 5 WhatsApp groups and 15 friends on WhatsApp, but one can skip it by just clicking on the share button and going back to the page as the progress bar increases.

After following all the processes, we noticed several grammatical and sentence structure errors which would not have emanated from NPC.

At the end of the registration,  we were directed to a website post of a blog named Scholarship-Joint (https://moringabalm.com.ng/2022/09/22/gmit-non-eu-student-scholarships-in-ireland/).

All these loopholes make the website suspicious. We did more research: scanned the website (https://npcadhoc2023.365clue.com/apply-now/), using Scamadviser and found it to be more suspicious.

Although the trust score of the website is 51% and the website is free from malware, but the identity of the website is hidden on Whois.

We also found out that the website is using a hosting provider with a dubious reputation, several scammers and spammers use the same registrar as the website.

The web link also keeps changing as one clicks from one page to the other.

Checking NPC Website, Social Platforms

ROUNDCHECK continued with the findings in verifying the claim by visiting the official website of NPC.

The NPC website led us to the original application portal, where it was discovered that the application had been closed.

Also, we visited the official Twitter page and found a post where the commission debunked a similar claim, which stated that the application portal had been closed. The post was made on February 21, 2023.

The commission had also posted a scam alert warning members of the public to beware of fake links and not fall victim to swindlers.

Verdict

The claim that the National Population Commission (NPC) is still recruiting ADHOC staff for the 2023 census is false. It is a HOAX created to steal unsuspecting applicants’ information.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We had conducted different checks into fake links purportedly linked to the NPC 2023 National Census and all of them are HOAX. Members of the public should beware.