Have you seen a message claiming that there is a Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme (P-YES) that is ongoing?
It is good that we inform you of the things we found about the claim.
The message is popular among WhatsApp users, claiming that the federal government has set up a Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme (P-YES).
The message when clicked on WhatsApp takes the applicant to a page where he/she is required to provide certain information.
After the applicant fills and submits the form, an eligibility status for the fund is checked. At this point, it is still looking sensible.
Until the applicant gets to the stage where they are asked to share this information to 15 friends and 5 groups on WhatsApp.
Remember that this was the way you probably came across the information in the first place.
At this point it was observed that this post had already garnered about 150,000 likes, 28,000 comments and 20,000 shares on Facebook.
It was also observed that the images used were doctored images that first showed up on the internet between 2017 and 2018.
With the use of Google reverse image, we found out that these three images were searched and picked from the internet and cropped into an image
Looking at the pictures above, it becomes abundantly clear that they were cropped by the people peddling this fake news about a P-YES scheme. Again, when the Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme (P-YES) scheme was searched on Google, it indeed came back with results
The first result when clicked takes you to an inaccessible webpage
Other results weren’t much helpful too; however, the Google result page had a Facebook page which was accessible.
When the page opens, this is what you see.
From the foregoing, one can comfortably say that this information is false and it is skewed towards attracting traffic to a Facebook page.
It is also important to note here that such information could be damaging to the credibility of the government, as citizens will be made to lose trust in the government.
Also, it could lead to voter’s apathy during election and much more.
When further enquiries were made about the Facebook page, it became obvious that that only one person by the name Yakubu Abkr updates the page.
Other posts found on the page had something to do with either a recruitment or a grant, which were found to be fictitious.
The Google search engine and Google reverse image was used in carrying out this verification. This information could not also be found on the platform of any reputable media house.
Moreso, the federal government did not and has not yet made any announcement, or released any information to show that this is coming from them.
In conclusion, it is very safe at this juncture to say that the information is fake, and that there is no Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme yet as of now from the government.
