A tweet from an X account (formerly Twitter), @renewed_hop with the caption BREAKING NEWS 🚨 says, “The Federal Government has promised the protesters that unemployment will end in Nigeria. The government will employ 300,000 workers in Nigeria, with each state employing 7,000 youths”.
Few hours after the tweet was made, it had generated over; 219,000 Views, 800 Comments, 400 Retweets and 2,000 Likes. The virality gathered by the post in a short period of time made it worth verifying to avoid the spread of fake news.
Verification Of Claim
Since the #EndBadGovernance protests began, President Bola Tinubu has not addressed the protesters or the nation but was to do that on Sunday August 4, a day after the claim was made.
Also, a further analysis into the account shows that the user has published several contents to popularise the current administration. Some of the claims have not been published on any credible media or account of Ministries, Departments, Agencies or credible newsmakers.
For example, on July 31, the user tweeted “IMPORTANT UPDATE 🚨 Npower to commence payment to its beneficiaries soon”
Similarly, the same account tweeted on July 30, “BREAKING NEWS 🚨Bag of rice is now 40k, petrol ₦350 per litre”.
While the government has said the sales of bags of rice will soon go for ₦40,000, pump price for Petrol (PMS) has not gone below ₦600 per litre, implying that the claim is false.
Motive
Due to the brewing tension as a result of the #EndBadGovernance protests, there has been a surge in content a few days prior and during the ongoing nationwide protest in a bid to calm the polity and portray the current administration in good light before Nigerians, specifically the protesters.
We can conclude that the latest claim of employment of 300,000 workers is false and was merely done for the sake of propaganda to quell the protests.
