On Friday, November 7, 2025, a post claiming that the government of President Bola Tinubu gifted ₦250 billion, ₦1 billion, and ₦500 million to Governors, Senators, and Rep members respectively, emerged sparking confusion and controversy among Nigerians.
A screenshot of the post
The Claim
The post was first published by SaharaReporters. However, in no time, it went viral and was published on several blogs and pages.
The claim was also published here, here, here, here, here, to mention a few.
SaharaReporters published the claim with the title: “EXCLUSIVE: Tinubu Government Gifts Each Governor Joining APC ₦250billion, Senator ₦1billion, Rep Member ₦500million For Defection”
The post reads in part: “The Bola Tinubu’s Presidency has been accused of a massive financial inducement scheme engineered to lure opposition governors and lawmakers into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Top sources within the Presidency told SaharaReporters on Friday that the ongoing wave of defections from opposition parties to the APC was being powered by jaw-dropping financial packages, coordinated directly from the Presidency and supervised by senior government officials around President Tinubu.
According to the sources, each state governor who has recently defected to the APC got a total package of ₦250billion.
“This money is released in two tranches; there is a ₦100 billion “grant” upfront once commitment is shown, and a balance of ₦150 billion after the formal defection ceremony,” one of the sources revealed.”
Verification
We will begin our verification process via Google, the number one search engine.
We combined the keywords; ‘Tinubu gifts governors apc’ for our search query. We found that no credible media firm or website reported the claim as published by SaharaReporters.
Screenshot from Google
The post shared by SaharaReporters was not linked to any credible source.
Also, the publication failed to attach any proof (Picture or Video) to back its claim. Similarly, there was no document presented to authenticate the claim.
However, the post claimed that the funds were disbursed as grants to the government officials.
Let’s check if any Governor, Senator, or House of Rep member who recently defected to the APC had received any Federal Government grant of such amount.
We entered the search query; ‘federal government grant for governors’ and found that no grant has been given to any Governor, Senator, or Rep member.
Grants have been issued to states in past years. Yes, states, not governors.
Screenshot from Google
Before we end this investigation, let’s visit YouTube for further verification.
We combined; ‘Tinubu gifts governors apc’ as our search query.
Again, no credible media outlet shared such information, only unverified sources.
In all the videos we watched, no video evidence, image, or document was shown.
Screenshot from YouTube
Conclusion
After thorough investigation, we found that there is no evidence available in public domain to back the said claim.
It is safe to say that the information is false and misleading.
Verification Tools
YouTube
