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By Gloria Ogine
Claim
Viral messages (with links) circulating on WhatsApp claim that Kwara State Governor AbdulRahma AbdulRazaq and his Oyo state counterpart, Seyi Makinde, have approved N10,000 as support palliative for students and civil servants in both states.
The messages, which were composed similarly, claimed it was the governors’ efforts to cushion the effect of subsidy removal.
ROUNDCHECK received these claims on Monday, August 14, 2023, on WhatsApp. The claim has since been going viral on different Whatsapp groups.
How true are the two claims with links? We checked.
ROUNCHECK Findings
ROUNDCHECK subjected the links (https://slnkz.com/kw-st-support-funds, https://thryt.com/Oy-st-palliative-funds) to a verification process using e.Veritas (a web link verification tool).
We clicked the first link about the Kwara State Governor and the website that opened displayed some glaring grammatical errors: “Kwar State Govt. as approve N10,000 to student, and civil servant” (sic).
The grammatical errors are a red flag, which cannot emanate from government-affiliated officials.
We further used EASYDMARC (another link verification tool) to check the links. We found that the link with the claim about the Kwara State palliative reads suspicious while the one of the Oyo State palliative reads clean (but that does not make the link correct).
We checked the official webpage of Kwara State and found a different link that students have been urged to use for the application for the palliative.
ROUNDCHECK observed that the link circulating on WhatsApp has a different URL from the authentic one that is provided on the Kwara State Government’s official website.
Also, no link was found on the Oyo State Government’s official website and no mainstream media has reported that a portal has been opened for the application of the Oyo State palliative nor did the government announce such.
Our findings showed that the links circulating on WhatsApp about the N10,000 subsidy palliative are suspicious and misleading.
The Oyo State Government did not release any link with which students should apply for the palliative and a statement credited to the Chief of Staff to the Governor of the state, Mr. Segun Ogunwuyi, debunked the claim describing it as fake news.
Verdict
The links claiming Kwara and Oyo State have rolled out N10,000 subsidy palliative are malicious and therefore we rate the claim INCORRECT.
This report was done by the author under the ROUNDCHECK Volunteers’ Network Project cohort III.
