By: Ibraheem Muhammad Mustapha
Claim
The Federal Government of Nigeria is giving out a sum of N50,000 as a Child Support Fund for all eligible parents in the country.
Verdict
False! Check shows the viral claim to be a hoax.
Full Text
Amidst the rising cost of living in Nigeria as a result of the current economic downturn, a message circulating on social media asserts that the Federal Government of Nigeria has initiated a Child Support Fund for all Nigerian parents, giving them a fifty thousand naira for free.
As of press time, the claim has gained considerable engagement across social media platforms especially on WhatsApp.
FactCheckAfrica initiated this verification process to ascertain its veracity and prevent the spread of misinformation.
Verification
FactCheckAfrica carefully analyzed the wordings of the message and observed some errors. This linguistic inconsistency is a hallmark of many bogus communication aiming to deceive innocent individuals.
The phrase “high level of complains” in lieu of “high level of complaints” immediately raises concerns. For clarity, official correspondences from government agencies are often thoroughly proofread and free of such grammatical glitches.
Also, we found that the message contained an emotional tone of appeal and urgency which are some of the random tactics employed by scammers to manipulate innocent individuals. Phrases like “Share with other parents let them all benefit” and “Apply now” are designed to trigger an emotional response, urging people to act quickly without thinking critically.
Furthermore, the website address attached to the message is far from the official government domains typically used for official announcements or services. Scammers frequently employ deceptive URLs that mimic legitimate websites to deceive and collect personal or financial information from unsuspecting individuals.
We ran a check online and saw that the scheme has been debunked by Dada Olusegun, a special assistant to President Tinubu on social media, who described the scheme as fake news.
Our AI tool, MyAiFactChecker, corroborated our findings by identifying the claim as false based on available data and patterns of its repetition.
Conclusion
Based on our findings, it is therefore important to consider the claim of a ₦50,000 Child Support Fund for all Nigerian parents from the Federal Government as a mere hoax and untrue.
