On August 16, 2024, a post claiming that Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, said that ₦8,000 can change the life of a Nigerian youth surfaced online.
The post read: “₦8,000 can change the life of a youth who knows what he is doing – says Kashim Shettima”.
Screenshot of the post
This post went viral in no time and the comment section was filled with Nigerians verbally attacking the VP.
The said post was shared by controversial blogger, Instablog9ja on X.
As of the time of this fact check, the post had gained 2.8M views, 13K likes, and 1.6K reposts.
But, the question begging for an answer is, did VP Shettima actually make this statement?
Do you want to find out?
Hop in, let’s do a little digging.
Instablog9ja did not give any detail of this statement in the post.
The post failed to mention when and where the Vice President made such a statement.
As usual, we began our fact-check by checking the Vice President’s social media handles.
We went through the VP’s Facebook page; Kashim Shettima.
Screenshot from Kashim Shettima’s Fb page
We found that Shettima never published such a statement on his handle.
Similarly, we visited the VP’s X account; @officialSKSM.
Guess what?
We couldn’t find such a statement on his page.
We combined the keywords; Kashim Shettima 8,000, for a Google search.
Screenshot from Google
Your guess is as good as ours.
No well-known publication carried the news.
The only blog that published this report is modernghana.com.
The report was published with the headline; ₦8,000 To Change A Life? Vice President Shettima’s Insensitive Remark Shows Disconnect From Reality.
Screenshot from modernghana.com
We took our time to read the report from the beginning to the end.
The report failed to present any credible source.
Also, the report did not mention when and where the Vice President made the statement.
Our search led us to YouTube.
We combined the keyword; Shettima 8000 for our YouTube search.
Screenshot from YouTube
We found that no video showing Shettima making such a statement was on YouTube.
Conclusion
After hours of searching, we found that there was no evidence in the public domain tying the said statement to Vice President Kashim Shettima.
It is safe to say that Shettima never made this statement, hence, the report is false.
Clearly, the post was shared to spark controversy, generate traffic, and paint the Vice President as a villain.
