Claim: A Facebook user has shared a screenshot of a Twitter post in which Joyce Bawah Mogtari, the spokesperson of Ghana’s former President John Dramani Mahama, is purported to have called out indigenes of the Ashanti Region as the people “causing problems [in Ghana] with their unnecessary egos.”
Verdict: False. Checks by DUBAWA had shown that the comments attributed to the spokesperson of Mr Mahama are completely false. Madam Joyce Bawa Mogtari has refuted the claim in a Facebook post on May 10, 2023. Also, one of the Facebook users who posted the screenshot told DUBAWA he deleted the falsehood when he realised it was fake.
Full Text
A screenshot of a Twitter post making the rounds on Facebook claims Ms Mogtari, the spokeswoman of Ghana’s Mr Mahama, has accused indigenes of the Ashanti Region of “always causing problems with their unnecessary egos.”
“This defeatist approach won’t work. John Mahama is NDC, and NDC is John Mahama,” Ms Mogtari was reported to have said in the purported Twitter post.
DUBAWA cannot readily confirm what the spokesperson of Ex-President John Mahama was reacting to in the purported screenshot.
However, the screenshot had been shared widely by several people on Facebook and WhatsApp, accompanied by various posts suggesting the spokeswoman has a “serious” dislike for Ashanti people. See here, here, here, and here.
Incensed by the content of the purported Twitter post, some people have called on the Ex-President to fire his staff, particularly Ms Mogtari. See here.
In light of DUBAWA’s campaign against misinformation and disinformation, which the Ministry of Information has complemented, this researcher decided to verify the truth around the screenshot.
Verification
Within hours after the purported screenshot found its way on Facebook, Ms Mogtari, the spokeswoman of Ghana’s Mr Mahama, posted a disclaimer on her Facebook wall over what she described as a “fake tweet.”
Although she was grateful to her friends and members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for bringing the screenshot to her attention, the private legal practitioner has encouraged all well-meaning Ghanaians to “rather discount, discredit or report the fake tweets instead of sharing same across platforms, knowing same to be fake.”
Also, another staffer at the Office of Ex-President John Mahama, Stan Xoese Dogbe, took to his Facebook wall to label the screenshot a “faked screenshot of a false tweet.”
“Why did you…not go and comment under her tweet, if indeed Joyce Bawah Mogtari had tweeted anything like that? Cowards!!!” he quizzed a Facebook user who had shared the screenshot earlier.
In the attempt to trace the source of the screenshot, DUBAWA contacted one of the Facebook users who were the first to share the claim after realising the post had been deleted.
When asked where he got the screenshot from, the Facebook user said it was sent to him by a friend on WhatsApp.
He, however, told DUBAWA that he deleted the screenshot within three minutes after he posted it upon realising it was fake.
It is, therefore, untrue that Ms Mogtari, the spokeswoman for Mr Mahama, accused indigenes of the Ashanti Region of “causing problems” in the West African nation.
Conclusion
The screenshot of a Twitter post in which Ms Mogtari, the spokesperson of Mr Mahama, is purported to have called out indigenes of the Ashanti Region as the people “causing problems [in Ghana] with their unnecessary egos” is fake.
Ms Mogtari has issued a disclaimer, urging Ghanaians to disregard the screenshot and report it to Facebook.
Also, one of the Facebook users who shared the screenshot has admitted to deleting the post on his wall after he realised it was fake.
