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Even though the subject was about a service fee, it was a single word, ‘Momo,’ that sparked the social media storm around two unconnected viral events.
On May 25, 2026, MTN Ghana’s mobile money subsidiary, MTN Mobile Money Fintech Limited, announced that it would charge a 0.75 per cent fee on every transfer from a MoMo wallet to a bank account, effective June 1.
Although the announcement sparked public outrage, it was misinformation and a creepypasta meme that drove real engagement online.
Social listening data tracked by DUBAWA on TrueWalker between May 21 and 27, 2026, on discussions about the MTN MoMo levy revealed 6,200 mentions, a cumulative engagement of 33,400, and a potential reach of 847,200 social media users.
The sentiments around the levy were significantly negative, with a score of 44.6% against 9.7% positive, translating into a ratio of more than four to one. As of May 30, the potential reach for the subject had increased to 795.9 million users, with sentiment at 42.4% negative and 16.1% positive. The 66% increase in positive sentiments could be attributed to the Bank of Ghana’s directive to the MTN fintech company to suspend the planned fee pending further consultation with relevant stakeholders.
Image of social listening data on MTN Momo Levy/Source: TrueWalker
The metrics indicated that conversations around the service fee charge spiked on May 26 and 27. The second peak followed the Bank of Ghana’s announcement, suggesting that the regulator’s intervention generated a new wave of engagement.
Image of social listening data on MTN Momo Levy/Source: TrueWalker
One of the X accounts that sparked the early misinformation campaign was @jakechat222, who posted a tweet on May 25. It reads:
Image of tweet by @jakechat222/ Source: X (formerly Twitter)
The tweet reached 337 users and generated 16 engagements. The numbers were modest, but the framing introduced the MTN Momo fee as equivalent to, or a reintroduction of, the government’s E-Levy.
Fact-checking at a glance
The claim is false. The E-Levy was a government-imposed tax on electronic transactions, enacted by the Nana Akufo-Addo administration in 2022 and subsequently repealed. The 0.75% charge announced in May 2026 is a privately imposed service fee by MTN Mobile Money Fintech Limited, a corporate entity separate from the government. The Bank of Ghana’s intervention was a regulatory action, not an admission that the fee originated with the government.
Misleading framing and misinformation
The false framing did not remain confined to @jakechat222’s tweet. DUBAWA used advanced X (Twitter) search to identify other accounts amplifying the E-Levy conflation. Posts from @BongoIdeasHQ, @MikelAsamoah, and @AnnanPerry used similar language linking the MTN fee to the repealed government tax.
Image of tweet by @BongoIdeasHQ/Source: X(formerly twitter)
Image of tweet by @MikelAsamoah/Source: X(formerly twitter)
The high traction of these posts suggests it was not the fee itself that drove negative sentiment, but its false framing as a government-imposed levy. This is evident in the search word ‘Momo’ registering strongly in Google Trends for Ghana as of May 27 (archived here).
Image of issues trending issues/Source: Google Trends
After DUBAWA scraped 392 TikTok videos using the web scraping platform Apify to search for keyword and hashtag queries related to MTN MoMo on 27 May 2026, the data showed that the word ‘Momo’ caused a keyword collision between the transfer fee controversy and an unrelated horror meme, two events with no inherent connection.
The metrics indicated that 335 unique accounts found in the dataset of TikTok videos were cumulatively viewed 58 million times. Of the 392 videos scraped from the video-sharing platform, 27 were directly about the 0.75% fee controversy, all posted between May 25 and 26, 2026. The 27 videos were viewed approximately 988,000 times.
Among those 27 videos, 12 carried straightforward, factual reporting of the MTN announcement or the BoG suspension. Accounts including @official_loiss, @dailydropgh, and @moseswumbei relayed the facts without partisan framing, collectively reaching around 67,000 views.
Misinformation amplified through narrative laundering
Five videos, however, connected the service fee to the E-levy, and this visual content generated the highest traction collectively. @dotcomghana’s video, headlined ‘E-levy or no E-levy, MTN introduces 0.75% charges,’ attracted 457,800 plays alone.
A video by @1man132, which combined the E-Levy hashtag with NDC political framing, reached 419,000. Together, the five misinformation videos generated an estimated 887,000 plays, which is roughly 90 per cent of all fee-controversy traction in the dataset, despite representing only 19 per cent of fee-related videos.
By contrast, the three videos that pushed back against the false claims from @bobby.luv, @ohenedarko491, and @i_am_stanley_ reached a combined total of approximately 15,000 plays. @bobby.luv offered the most direct rebuttal, stitching a video by @Gen.Buhari and stating plainly that ‘E-Levy was a government tax. What MTN announced is a telecom service charge.’ It received 1,328 plays.
Six further videos used explicit political framing referencing either the NPP or the NDC parliamentary conflict angles over the levy. The videos reached around 455,000 plays combined. Only one video in the entire fee-controversy subset used a meme or humour format: @mansethoexplore’s text-based riff, which reached 225 plays.
The horror video and why it found itself in the storm
One item in the dataset that dwarfed everything else was the creepypasta meme.
A creepypasta, according to Ertan (2026), is digitally created horror imagery that evolved from text-based folklore into short-form video content used to evoke fear, mischief, or panic.
A 2019 BBC report said the ‘MoMo challenge,’ a creepypasta, became an internet sensation in 2016. The figure depicts a sculpture by the Japanese special-effects company Link Factory. The ‘MoMo challenge’ was often used to trigger fear among children. The UK Safe Internet Centre has categorised the use of creepy pasta as a form of misinformation.
However, one such video that went viral was a “MoMo challenge” created by TikTok creator @uncledihtiktok. It was meant to be a comedic reaction meme referencing the 2016 and 2019 ‘Momo Challenge’ internet creepypasta (archived here). The video was posted on April 18, 2026, five weeks before the MTN MoMo service fee was announced. It had accumulated 16.3 million plays, 2.8 million likes, 685,100 shares, and 17,500 comments. Its traction was roughly 16 times the combined plays of all 27 fee-controversy videos.
Its caption contained no reference to MTN, bank charges, Ghana, the Bank of Ghana, or the E- Levy. It carried only the hashtags #funny, #momo, #fyp, and #viral. The scraper returned it because it matched the keyword ‘momo,’ the same word used for both the creepypasta figure and MTN’s Mobile Money service. This was a keyword collision, not a thematic connection. It is unclear how many users might have reacted to it upon seeing the word ‘momo.’
Conclusion
The service fee announcement generated genuine public anger, recorded across more than 6,200 mentions and 847,200 potential reach. That anger was quickly framed, however, by early posts on X and by high-traction TikTok videos. The framing was false. The fee was a private corporate decision, not a government tax. The Bank of Ghana suspended it the following day, but the false framing had already reached hundreds of thousands of users, accounting for the bulk of the dataset’s engagement.
The viral horror video was included in the dataset only because a scraper matched a shared word. Its 16.3 million views had nothing to do with mobile money fees. What drove the MTN MoMo levy conversation viral was not a meme. The creepypasta was simply caught up in the storm. It was a politically weaponised false equivalence between a private service charge and a repealed government tax, one that spread far digitally.
