Claim: Youth Enterprise Support Initiative 2021, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, is reported to be awarding Ghanaian applicants, GH₵30,000 per week under the YES fund.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied it and described this viral message as fake.
Full story
Between Thursday and Friday, many WhatsApp users received a message which was purportedly issued by the Youth Enterprise Support under the name of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. In the message was a link that asked all interested Ghanaians to apply and choose their preferred mode of payment, adding that their accounts would be credited “as soon as as possible.”
The application form was available on ghanafunds.applyfast.online and requested applicant’s first name, last name, phone number and email address.
According to the website,
“All Ghanaians are entitled to GH₵30,000 per week for the youth enterprise support fund. Proceed now to apply by filling the provided form and choose your preferred payment method. Your account will be credited as soon as possible.”
Beneath the form was another false claim that Youth Enterprise Support was initiated by President Nana Akufo-Addo. The site could not tell the exact figure of Ghanaians who have benefited from the Initiative. The lack of such critical information raised suspicion over the content on the site.
Verification
The supposed disbursement of GH₵30,000 (an unusually generous offer from government) per week to each Ghanaian that completes the application stimulated Dubawa’s curiosity.
A telephone conversation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that,
“Since it is not advertised on any of our pages and website, it is not true; disregard it,” an official of the Ministry warned.
The official further warned that Ghanaians should disregard it.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, in a release dated May 17, 2021 said “the Government of Ghana has neither established a support initiative that goes by the name ‘Youth Enterprise Support Initiative 2021’ nor has the President of the Republic, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo initiated any programme that provides the above mentioned financial support.”
“The Ministry wishes to advise the general public to disregard the ‘Youth Enterprise Support Initiative 2021’ and the claims being made about its purported services since it is fraudulent,” the release added.
Furthermore, the Facebook page for the Youth Enterprise Support, which is associated with the claim being made, did not have the same announcement purported to have come from it. The last post on that page, as at the time the search was conducted, dated back to August 11, 2015.
Conclusion
It is not true that the Youth Enterprise Support, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, is set to award GH₵30,000 to Ghanaian applicants per week.
This report was produced under the Dubawa Student Fact-checking Project aimed at offering students in tertiary schools aspiring to take up roles in the profession the opportunity to acquire real-world experience through verification and fact-checking.
Claim: President Nana Akufo-Addo says Ghana’s anti-corruption ranking has gone up several notches since he assumed office in 2017.
According to the Corruption Perception Index, the world’s most trusted metric for assessing perceived levels of public sector corruption, its reports published between 2012 and 2020 show Ghana has not risen significantly in terms of perceptions of lower corruption.
Full text
Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo in a recent interview with CNN’s Zain Asher which has been published on YouTube, said since his party took over government, Ghana’s ranking in the world, in terms of corruption, has improved significantly.
In his own words, Ghana has “gone up several notches.”
Below is the transcript of his answer on the issue of corruption in Ghana.
Zain Asher: One of your most important mandates aside from fixing the economy is of course tackling corruption. Are you proud of the way your government has dealt with corruption and what specific steps have you made in trying to root it out?
Nana Akufo-Addo: The word proud or pride is not the word I would use. Am I satisfied that we’ve been effective? I will say yes. I will say yes. A lot has been done, and it is reflected in Ghana’s growing position on rankings of corruption in the world. We’ve gone up several notches since I came into office because we are dealing with these matters at the basic level.
For the anti-corruption institutions of our country, when I came into office, [they] were very poorly resourced. We can talk all we like about corruption and make all the wonderful statements but if the instruments at your disposal for dealing with it are weak and blunt, you will get no result.
We took this claim and subjected it to a test.
Verification
Across the world, the most reputable and widely referenced corruption ranking reports is Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople.
Although the index has been around since 1995, Ghana started featuring in the index in 1998 and was ranked number 55 out of the 85 countries featured that year.
The table below shows Ghana’s ranking since 1998 when she made her debut.
Blue: Ghana’s CPI ranking
Red: Total number of countries assessed
NB: The higher the ranking, the higher the perception of corruption.
President Akufo-Addo who made the claim assumed office in January 2017. Saying that Ghana has gone up several notches since he assumed office means that Ghana’s ranking has significantly improved since the 2016 report which was released during the presidency of John Mahama.
Table 1: Ghana’s Performance on the CPI from 2016 – 2020
Based on the available data, Ghana’s ranking on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) since the Akufo-Addo government assumed office has been of ups and downs.
Global Corruption Barometer
Transparency International’s other corruption indicator, the Global Corruption Barometer, in its latest document (2019) finds that 33% of people it interviewed were of the view that corruption had increased in the previous 12 months.
The same percentage of people also indicated that they had paid bribes in the last 12 months to access public service.
The previous report, published in 2015 found that 76% of people interviewed believed that corruption had increased in the previous 12 months while 36% had also indicated that they had paid bribes in the last 12 months to access public service.
Conclusion
Based on the available data from Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, it is untrue that Ghana’s ranking has improved or ‘gone up several notches’ since President Akufo-Addo assumed office in 2017.
Malaria, a disease spread to humans through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, infects about 290 million people every year. Data available indicate that about 400,000 people die out of this number of infected persons.
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes malaria as “a life-threatening disease” with funding for its control reaching an estimated US$ 3 billion in 2019, a figure which is less than half of what the international health organization needs to fight the disease.
The statistics show that children under the age of 5 are the most vulnerable group affected by malaria; in 2019 they accounted for 67% (274,000) of all malaria deaths worldwide.
Africa is still home to a greater share of the world’s malaria statistics. The WHO 2019 report indicates Africa was home to 94% of the total global malaria cases and deaths.
Nigeria alone had the highest number of malaria cases worldwide, accounting for 27% of global cases according to the 2020 World Malaria Report despite the country’s challenge in managing data regarding the disease. The data suggests that about 76% of Nigeria’s population live in high risk transmission areas.
With most cases occurring in Sub-saharan Africa, six countries in the region – Nigeria (23%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (11%), United Republic of Tanzania (5%), Burkina Faso (4%), Mozambique (4%) and Niger (4% each) accounted for half of all malaria deaths globally in the 2019 report.
In terms of general malaria cases, Nigeria (27%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (12%), Uganda (5%), Mozambique (4%) and Niger (3%) accounted for about 51% of all cases globally.
Even with these alarming figures, the report suggested that the WHO African Region had the largest absolute reduction in malaria deaths, from 533,000 in 2010 to 380,000 in 2018.
The Fight So Far
Aside from ensuring clean surroundings to prevent mosquitoes from breeding and spreading malaria, the fight against the disease has mostly hinged on sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) on a regular basis. According to the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sleeping under ITNs can help reduce one’s risk of becoming sick with malaria as the contact between mosquitoes and humans are reduced through this physical barrier.
The CDC says ITNs were effective in reducing under 5 deaths from all causes by about 20% in community-wide trials in several African settings.
Currently, antimalarial drugs are also used to prevent and fight malaria.
There is currently no licenced malaria vaccine although progress has been made in the last ten years to manufacture one. While several of them are still in clinical trials, France24 reported on April 23, that a new malaria vaccine made by the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute has proven 77 per cent effective in trials on infants. After a clinical trial in Burkina Faso, the new malaria vaccine, Matrix-M, showed no serious adverse effects after a year of administering it.
Although there is RTS, S/AS01 (RTS,S) which is the first vaccine to be developed, the new Matrix-M is the first candidate vaccine for malaria that has surpassed the 75% efficacy as has been set by the World Health Organization.
Even before the world could find a vaccine for coronavirus, a lot of conspiracy theories had been churned out on many platforms including social media. From altering DNAs to enlarging the male sexual organ, misinformation peddlers would not stop at anything to make sure people rejected the vaccines. The misinformation on vaccines became alarming when the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners started rolling out the vaccines.
In all of this, one of the most circulated claims on social media about the vaccines is that relating to fertility. Several social media users have shared messages regarding this with no particular source cited. Some of them have claimed that men and women who have the intention of getting pregnant in future should not take the vaccine as it may make them sterile and infertile (See some of the claims in the screenshots below).
Aside from these social media claims, other people have concerns on the safety of the vaccines in relation to fertility.
In this report, we find out what experts say about the vaccines and fertility in both men and women.
Will an approved COVID-19 vaccine make one infertile?
The general safety of approved COVID-19 vaccines has already been established by the WHO. The organization has indicated that “before receiving validation from WHO and national regulatory agencies, COVID-19 vaccines must undergo rigorous testing in clinical trials to prove that they meet internationally agreed benchmarks for safety and effectiveness.”
“While fertility was not specifically studied in the clinical trials of the vaccine, no loss of fertility has been reported among trial participants or among the millions who have received the vaccines since their authorization, and no signs of infertility appeared in animal studies. Loss of fertility is scientifically unlikely,” the three organizations said in a joint statement.
Do you Need to Delay Getting Pregnant after Vaccination?
Furthermore, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has also indicated that people do not need to delay getting pregnant after getting a dose of the vaccine as “there is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility.”
According to another publication by University of Chicago School of Medicine, women can still go ahead and take the second dose of the vaccine even after finding out they are pregnant after the first dose. According to the publication, the “only possible risk physicians are currently aware of with the vaccine is the possibility of a fever following the second dose, a side effect experienced by around 10-15% of vaccine recipients.”
Nonetheless, a publication by WebMD suggests that Pfizer, one of the pharmaceutical companies producing COVID-19 vaccines, is studying its two-dose vaccine in 4,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women to see how safe the effects of Covid-19 vaccines are. The report further says that the researchers will also look at how safe the vaccine is for infants and whether mothers pass along antibodies to children. Results of this study are expected to be ready by the end of year, according to the report.
Yes. Experts at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say it is safe for breastfeeding women to get the vaccine. According to them “there is no need to stop breastfeeding if you want to get a vaccine. After you get vaccinated, the antibodies made by your body can be passed through breastmilk and can help protect your child from the virus.”
While studies are still being done on the effects of COVID-19 Vaccines, reputable health agencies such as the CDC and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have indicated that none of the vaccines rolled out so far has been found to make men and women infertile.
Inspired by the need to tackle and curb the rapid spread of mis- and dis-information and further expand the art and reach of verified and accurate information to rural and urban societies, to institutionalize a culture of fact-checking across the globe, and to build knowledge around the menace of information disorder in Africa, the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), through its fact-checking project, DUBAWA, is now accepting applications for her Kwame Karikari fact-checking and research fellowship.
Named after Professor Kwame Karikari, redoubtable media freedom advocate and founder of the Media Foundation for West Africa, MFWA, both the Fact-Checking and Research Fellowships are designed to promote accountability of public institutions, institutionalize the art and culture of fact-checking in newsrooms, and build knowledge around the phenomenon in the Anglophone axis of the West African sub-region. This edition of the fellowship is the third in its series.
The twin-track programme offers a six-months fellowship for journalists (fact-checkers) to incorporate fact-checking into their work; and another six-month fellowship for scholars (researchers) to conduct original research for publication in contribution to building knowledge around information disorder.
The fellowships are supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation (HBS), and they both offer a monthly stipend to cover all costs of the investigation and research project for fellows.
Fact-checking Track
The fact-checking track is open to journalists and reporters in traditional and new media. Experience in fact-checking is not required of prospective applicants for the fact-checking track. However, prospective applicants must:
Be journalists in new media platforms (online blogs), print media, radio, and TV stations in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
Be interested in pursuing fact-checking of stories pertaining to politics, economy, health, governance, business, media etc.
Be willing to think about ways to expand the reach of verified information to grassroots communities that are targeted constituencies for political, social, and cultural disinformation.
Have proficient computer skills.
Be working in a media organization willing to cross publish with Dubawa.
Selected applicants will be expected to:
Write (online and print media) or broadcast (radio and TV) three (3) fact-check stories related to politics, health, economy, media etc. And one (1) media literacy article/ explainer on a monthly basis.
Promote fact-checking on all social media, print, online, radio, or TV platforms as necessary.
Train colleagues in their newsrooms on the theory and practice of fact-checking.
Assist their newsroom to set up fact-checking desks upon completion of the programme.
Cross-publish fact-check reports on their platform and Dubawa.
Journalists and reporters from local language speaking media organisations are encouraged to apply to join this year’s fellowship.
If selected, the applicant(s) must provide proof of approval from the newsroom that authorizes the applicant to undertake fact-checking work and provide an assurance that fact-checks will be widely circulated on their media platform, newspapers, as well as on Dubawa’s websites as well.
Scholars (Research) Track
The Research Fellowship Programme is initiated through Dubawa’s, Information Disorder Analysis Centre (IDAC), a Project which creates knowledge on the information disorder ecosystem through extensive research, following an identification of gaps in knowledge that should drive policy and democratic discourse around technological consequences, social media, and political legislation. This track is open to postdoctoral and graduate/research fellows.
Prospective applicants for this track must choose from one of the following areas during the fellowship:
Policy on Press Freedom
Politics and its influences on the information disorder ecosystem
Policy on social media, data, and new-age technology.
Social media, legacy media, and audience communication behaviours
Nature, perception, and impact of information disorder
Who can apply for this fellowship?
Prospective applicants must:
Be graduates, postgraduate students, post-doctoral candidates, or persons who work in academia in Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia
Have at least intermediate level of IT skills
Have good analytical skills
Possess wide and demonstrable prior-experience in conducting research (on any subject).
Have genuine interest in learning and contributing to the development of knowledge around the IDAC project.
Be willing to give sufficient time or attention to the fellowship.
Be willing to meet up with the required deliverables.
Applicants who are post-doctoral researchers must commit to:
Carry out six months of research into any of the identified focus areas.
Be part of Dubawa’s workflow, attending editorial team meetings.
Give a public lecture on any of the focus areas relevant to their research while in residence at IDAC.
To publicize and share results of findings with the general public.
Applicants who are undergraduates and postgraduates researchers must commit to:
To carry out research into any of the identified areas
Host a monthly or bi-monthly webinar on the findings of their research and give a lecture under the auspices of IDAC’s Occasional Webinar Series.
Make radio appearances at various stages of both fellowships to bring to the fore the issues raised or identified by the research efforts.
Provide monthly analytical articles showing the interim findings of the research being conducted in the first five months and the final product at the end of the sixth month.
Note: All applicants will go through two stages of selection: filling an application form and attending a virtual interview.
Fellowship Timelines
Application Starts: 23 April – 7 May 2021
Selection and interviews: 10 – 14 May 2021
Training (Fact-checkers): Tuesday 18 – Friday 21 May
Discussion Forum (Researchers): 25 – 26 May 2021
Fellowship Program Begins/Ends: May – November 2021
How to Apply
Applicants who are certain they meet the above criteria should click the appropriate link below to apply:
Claim: Video showing people crossing the Ngueli bridge in Chad into Cameroon.
The bridge in the video is not the Ngueli bridge but a bridge in N’Djamena.
Full text
A viral video, circulated on Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram has generated conversation on the possible inflow of refugees from Chad into Cameroon.
The video, mostly without sound, shows a large number of people moving across a bridge which runs over a water body.
The video in itself did not indicate the location of the bridge or give any information on the ongoing situation. Accompanying the video, however, is a text that states:
“Right now, hundreds of thousands of Chadian refugees are crossing over the Ngueli bridge to the Republic of Cameroon, less than 40kms to the Nigerian border.”
“Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of Chadian refugees were crossing over the Ngueli bridge to the Republic of Cameroon, less than 40kms to the Nigerian border. They may eventually cross to Nigeria unless their country stabilises becos Cameroun are hostile. Govt should take action!”
The accompanying messages suggest that many Chadians fear a deterioration of the political situation in the country following the death of Former President Idriss Deby at the front line.
Following his death, Mr Deby’s son Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, was appointed to lead the country for 18 months until elections, a move the opposition party and many Chadians opposed.
However, the rebels, whom President Deby fought for many years, vowed to reclaim the capital, N’Djaména, an announcement instilling fears in citizens. For fear of violence, many residents of the capital were seen fleeing on Tuesday.
This development prompted fears of possible refugee situations in neighbouring countries, especially Nigeria and Cameroon. One of such videos claiming Chadians are crossing a border bridge into Cameroon went viral with many commenters calling on both Nigerian and Cameroonian governments to take action against such migration.
Dubawa set out to locate the bridge in the video to ascertain if indeed the location is truly the Ngueli bridge.
Verification
To begin with, Dubawa noticed that no major news platform had carried any such news, raising a red flag. Dubawa tracked the conversations around the video and came across an Instagram user, @chikacharles, who stated that he lives in Chad and added that indeed the event seen in the video took place on the Ngueli bridge.
Image: Screenshot of Instagram user corroborating claim that the event took place on the Ngueli bridge.
Source: Instagram
Basic google search revealed that the Ngueli Bridge connects Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, to Kousseri, a town in the far north of Cameroon. Using Google search of the Ngueli bridge, we came across the following images.
Image of people crossing the Ngueli bridge in February 2008.
Gettyimages also had a collection of images from the Ngueli bridge which suggest that the Reuters image above is accurate.
From observation, it is clear that the bridge in the video and that in the pictures do not look the same. A feature that stands out is the support beams for the bridge.
Image: Screenshot of bridge seen in the video with a red marking showing the beams supporting the bridge.Image: Image of the Ngueli bridge with a red circle showing the support beams.
The support beams in the video show a single beam instead of the double beam bridge from the Ngueli bridge image. Furthermore, a google map image of the Ngueli bridge shows a double, side-by-side structure as opposed to the single structure in the video, suggesting that the bridges are not the name.
Image: Screenshot of Google Maps generated image of the Ngueli bridge.
Which bridge is it then?
Dubawa then sought to find out which bridge was in the video.
Firstly, we searched for bridges over the Chari river and looked through the related images. We identified the Ngueli bridge and another bridge which had a similar structure to the one in the video.
Image of what looked like the bridge seen in the video. Source: Getty images
Further search was conducted on the image above and we discovered that the bridge bears many similarities to the bridge seen in the video. By comparing shots from the video and the images generated in Google maps, we were able to pinpoint this bridge to be on the Djamena-Moundou road in N’Djamena.
We did this using the wall, sand site/construction site, the circled trees and the roofed structures as seen in the screenshots from the images below.
Image: Screenshot of a section of the video with red arrows pointing at the wall and the sand/construction site.Image: Screenshot of a section of the video with a circled structure.Image: Screenshot of a section of the video with a circled tree.
By Using Google Maps and Google Maps Pro, we identified the images from the screenshots of the video as seen below.
Image: Google map output of the Djamena- Moundou bridge area showing the wall, tree and roofed structure as seen in the image above. See red arrows.Image: Google map output showing the sand/construction site , consistent with the screenshots from the video in question.
The Ngueli bridge goes over the Logone river while the bridge in the video goes over the Chari river. This would imply that the people going over the bridge would not be in Cameroon once they get across the bridge but will still be in Chad.
Image: This is the Google Maps view of the actual bridge shown in the video.Image: This is the Google Maps image of the bridge being claimed in the video.
Conclusion
The video showing people’s movement did not take place on the Ngueli bridge as suggested by the texts accompanying the video but rather a bridge on the Djamena-Moundou road in N’Djamena. This bridge is different from the Ngueli bridge that connects N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, to Kousseri in Cameroon.
In a 17-minute 5-second video posted by Tino Media on Facebook, an unseen man who is heard speaking in a local Ghanaian language (Twi), alleges that the purpose for the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines is targeted at the elimination of Africans. He makes this main claim with about 13 other related claims in the video. The video is accompanied by an inscription in the post which reads “Do not take any vaccine; it is not safe. I think the vaccine must be investigated very well before vaccination.”
The video, which has a thumbnail of Ghana’s president receiving his jab of the COVID-19 vaccine, has generated a number of comments from the public, most of them thanking the claimant for the awareness and stating that they will subsequently not be vaccinated.
Dubawa translated the narration of the claimant in the 17-minute 5-second video from Twi to English to give more context to the claims. The summary reads below as follows;
Interviewer: Let me welcome you. Before we get to our president, I’m sure you have seen some videos circulating about a nurse on the frontline deciding to be injected and in less than 3minutes, she collapsed. Now they stopped the camera men that were around. I will say she died. And a second video of a guy singlehandedly saying that Islamic is against abortion, and the medicines that are being done are as though you’re having family planning.
Claimant: COVID-19 is not “CoronaVirus Disease released in the year 2019’’ that’s what they’ve said for a lot of people to believe. It’s real name is Certificate of Vaccination Identity and the 19 stands for AI. When you take the English alphabets which stands for Artificial Intelligence so it is a Certificate of Vaccination Identity using Artificial Intelligence. Bill Gates has a patent for this called Radio Frequency Identity. It is a chip. They use a material which looks liquid but when it gets inside you, it is an artificial intelligence. It is called a nano technology. It spreads throughout the system and you become an agent so that when you are being looked for, you will be found easily. If they put the satellite and the 5G in you, they will find you. This kind of vaccination identity. The Bill Gates RFID technology that he did, if you do something and you don’t want anyone to steal it, you go for something called a patent to protect it. We have two types of patents. The American type is called A, and the global type is called WO. Bill Gates is American and with the RFID, he went with the WO because he knows he is doing it for the whole world. So his number is WO 06, 06 06. He has put the 0’s there so you don’t identify it as 666. So the number is World Patent Number WO 666 and there are zeros in between so you do not recognise it. Someone who is Christian shouldn’t take it because it is an anti-Christ sign which the Bible talks about that if you get that sign you can’t travel, engage in business, you can’t do anything. Right now, the pandemic didn’t work like how they expected it to. Bill Gates’ wife said that we will die like soldier ants in hundreds and thousands and they said about 35 million Africans would die but it didn’t happen that way. If it had happened the way they expected it, we would have all been rushed to take the vaccine . Vaccine was done in 2015 not today. They started during the Lockstep 2010 document that I brought so the vaccine was done between 2010 and 2015. Covid is also something from micro organisms -one is from HIV that they did to kill Africans in South Africa and the second one is the SARS-2. So it’s the HIV and SARS which is called a hybrid COVID-19. Now the COVID-19, when you look into it, the number of people who have died outside America is just a few. In America, when someone dies and you show a death certificate stating COVID-19, then they give you 19,000 free. There are a lot of doctors, some have died with asthma, some have died with blood pressure, some have died with cancer but you check their death certificate and you see COVID-19 on it because he is going to get 19, 000 in exchange. They did that because they wanted the numbers to be high so they alert everyone on the high number of COVID-19 so people take the vaccine. China has 1.2 billion people being the first country to have gotten this virus, but not a lot of people died but why is that America with all their sophisticated technology had so many people dying -they are lying. So the American figures are a fake, okay. So that’s the COVID-19 story which didn’t work. They said if it doesn’t work, they will bring another one which is more dangerous and this will be a tribrid which means you are combining three things-the HIV Aids and the two SARS and then they added MERS, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. They said that will kill a lot of people in order for people to take the vaccine. The whole point of this is the vaccination, that is the endgame. So even though the virus didn’t have as much impact as they wanted, if you realise they have brought a new strain, which spreads fast. They have brought it to California and London. In London, it is Africans that they are looking for cause they know Ghanaians are travelling, South Africans are travelling, Nigerians are travelling, West Africans go to London so no matter what, if they take it there and an African gets affected, or someone coming from there can bring it to Africa. So yesterday, before he spoke, I did a tape for the president telling him that I beg him before he talks, he should close airlines. As I speak, Belgium and Holland have stopped planes from Britain from landing. They said they wouldn’t let them land because of the deadly strain of the COVID-19. I sent it to the president, he didn’t listen. So the pictures you sent us, that wasn’t all. There were a lot of people that took photos showing the syringe on their skin but it had been closed, that is also going round. If you’re going to inject someone, there is already medicine in the syringe and many people including CNN when because they know we know what is going on, they took close shots. The syringe has already been closed. There are a lot of photos showing we are being deceived. Number 2 they said they were going to let some leaders take the shots first. If the leader comes and it is only sea water in the syringe, how will you know. They come into public to take the shots with nothing in the syringe. Yesterday a lady went to take the vaccine and she said she was okay. We saw another clip of the COVID vaccine where it was written ‘not for use in Canada, america and europe’. Why is this so, that means you know where it is supposed to go. So it has been divided so don’t think that when you see that a white person has been vaccinated and is okay, you the black person will be fine, they are lying. Even if a Ghanaian says they have taken the shots and are okay, don’t believe it because the country they are in, it is different from the vaccines they are receiving. And also, those vaccinating know the vaccine to give to black people abroad when they go to take the vaccine you are not there, so if they go take the vaccine meant for Africans, you won’t know so if you are injected. Oh yesterday, 200 people were injected, only one was complaining. It is not like that, the one complaining received a different vaccine that’s why it is like that.
Also they have given them legal immunity, there are restaurant people who put a signup that you eat at your risk. How is that government yesterday Britain brought out an instruction for covid 19 that read that if you are injected and you die, that is your own problem, you can’t sue any pharmaceutical company. They have been given legal immunity. The vaccines they have brought, they have written on it that if you’re injected and there is a problem, don’t ask them. America, Britain and Europe have all signed a contract with them. In Britain or America, about 100 people got injected. They gave everyone 100,000 dollars for a non disclosure agreement that says if you are vaccinated and something happens to you don’t tell anyone to become a problem. And in case you die, we can’t be sued or if you get a reaction. Also in Holland, Netherlands, 87, 000 nurses have signed petitions to not be vaccinated. It’s the health workers who would have been vaccinated for us to confirm that the vaccine was okay. The nurse who got vaccinated, 17 minutes later and she fainted. They couldn’t find her to bring her forward to speak so if it is someone else who was brought to us to speak or if she survived, we don’t know. When she fell down, we all saw it. So the nurses in Holland said they won’t be vaccinated. Also they said they love Africans so much so we should be the first to take the vaccines. They don’t want us to suffer or die. So in California and about 10 states of the US said Blacks and Spanish people should be the first to be vaccinated and they said they are joking.
Melinda Gates also said that she doesn’t want the poor nations to be cheated so we should start with the poor nations. Do you think we are kids? So let everyone know that it is Black people they are looking for. We are 728 billion people on the planet, they want to reduce it to 500 million which is 0.5 billion. Nobody is doing politics. We have already explained that before the HIV-Aids virus and Sars 2 virus come together to be one, in the natural world it will take over a 100 million years. It won’t happen. It is absolutely impossible. They did this in Fort Detrick in America. Please the 2010 lockstep document that I brought, go and read it. It is in there. And they took it to Winnipeg Canada and they moved from there to Wuhan, and they went to the game market where they sell animals called wet market. That is why they did it like an accident. They are lying, it is from Fort Detrick in America. So the person who did the virus is doing the vaccine and asking people to be injected, who is the wicked person?
We fact-checked the claims identified in the video.
Claim 1: COVID-19 is not “CoronaVirus Disease released in the year 2019’’ but it’s real name is Certificate of Vaccination Identity using Artificial Intelligence.
COVID-19 stands for Coronavirus Disease 2019 and there is no accessible evidence of COVID-19 being an acronym indicating vaccination identity or artificial intelligence.
Verification
The disease was named in February 2020 before a vaccine was found in 2020. On 11 February 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the name of the novel Coronavirus to be COVID-19. According to a WHO publication on 11 February 2020, the name COVID-19 was chosen following best practices and did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual, or group of people in order to avoid inaccuracy and stigma associated with the disease.
“The new name of this disease is coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. Formerly, this disease was referred to as ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘2019-nCoV.”
Claim 2: Bill Gates has a trackable microchip in vaccines through a RFID
Bill Gates has not designed an RFID and has no trackable microchips implanted in vaccines.
Verification
According to an investigation by Logically, the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) which uses radio waves to read and capture information stored in an object was not designed by Bill Gates.
“Bill Gates did not design or patent radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. One of the first such patents was taken out in the 1970s by Charles Walton, who went to Cornell, and Mario W. Cardullo. No single individual may take credit for all of the technological advances that lead up to the ultimate development of RFID,” the report read.
Furthermore, Bill Gates has denied this claim on countless occasions. In a media interview reported by USAToday announcing a $1.6 billion in funding for immunization in poor countries, Gates stated that he has never been involved in any sort of microchipping conspiracy.
“In a way, it’s so bizarre you almost want to see it as something humorous, but it’s really not a humorous thing,” he said. “It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even to repeat it gives it credibility,” Gates said.
The claim is suspected to have emerged from two possible sources. Firstly, in March 2020, Bill Gates announced the need for “digital certificates” to identify recovered, tested, and vaccinated persons against COVID-19. However, no mention was made of microchips or an RFID technology implanted in vaccines.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation explained that “The reference to ‘digital certificates’ relates to efforts to create an open-source digital platform with the goal of expanding access to safe, home-based testing.”
“The technology is not a microchip and is more like an invisible tattoo. It has not been rolled out yet, would not allow people to be tracked and personal information would not be entered into a database,” according to a scientist involved in the study, Ana Jaklenec.
Claim 3: Bill Gates’ wife said that we will die like soldier ants in hundreds and thousands and they said about 35 million Africans would die but it didn’t happen that way.
There is no evidence of Melinda Gates saying Africans will die in hundreds and thousands from the pandemic, however, there is evidence of Melinda Gates stating the possible dire effects the pandemic will have on Africans due to poor infrastructure.
Verification
In a CNN interview with Melinda Gates from last year April 2020, which has been taken out of context by many social media posts to fit the claim, Melinda Gates stated that from her experience and foundation work in Africa, she had concerns for how Africa would deal with the pandemic with some communities having poor conditions such as unclean water and slums.
“It’s going to be horrible in the developing world. The reason the case numbers don’t look very bad is because they don’t have access to tests. Look at Ecuador, they are putting bodies out on the street, you’re going to see that in countries in Africa,” Gates said.
In a report by Reuters in April 2020, however, there is evidence of the United Nations Economic Commision for Africa (UNECA) estimating that about 300,000 Africans (not 35 million as the claim states) will die in the pandemic.
“The COVID-19 pandemic will likely kill at least 300,000 Africans and risks pushing 29 million into extreme poverty, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said on Friday, calling for a $100 billion safety net for the continent,” the report read.
Claim 4: COVID-19 vaccine was done between 2010 and 2015 not today, as shown in a Lockstep 2010 document.
Verdict:
There has been no known COVID-19 vaccine till trials for a COVID-19 vaccine started in 2020.
In the 2010 lockstep document titled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” cited by the claimant to document the vaccine manufacturing, no mention of vaccines is made. On page 18 of the document, which contains the chapter on the ‘Lockstep’ as a Scenario Narrative, it shows a simulation exercise projecting the need for the advancement of technology. In the simulated scenario of a pandemic, other technological innovations were predicted and not a vaccine.
Claim 5: COVID-19 is a hybrid of HIV and SARS-2
There is no found evidence to prove this claim.
Verification
According to the CDC, COVID-19 is a new disease caused by a novel Coronavirus that has previously not been seen in humans. Even though the exact source of the outbreak of COVID-19 is still unknown, it is known that it started from an animal, which is likely to be a bat. The CDC further explains that COVID-19 belongs to a family of Coronaviruses which are common in people and many different species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats. They add that COVID-19 is a beta coronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, where these viruses have their origins in bats.
Human coronaviruses include some that commonly cause mild upper-respiratory tract illnesses, while animal coronaviruses rarely infect people and later spread between people such as in the cases of two earlier coronaviruses, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV.
Claim 6: In America, when someone dies and a death certificate stating COVID-19 is shown, one receives 19,000 for free. There are a lot of doctors, who have died with asthma, with blood pressure, and with cancer but when you check their death certificate, you will see COVID-19 on it because they are going to get 19,000 in exchange.
Many Americans who died from COVID-19 are shown to have had contributing conditions to their death on their death certificates where necessary. There have been no public reports that hospitals or individuals are receiving 19,000 for COVID-19 deaths.
Verification
According to a report by the CDC in August 2020, only 6% of deaths had COVID-19 as the cause while the remaining 94% of people who died from COVID-19 had other health conditions and contributing causes top among them being influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure, renal failure, intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events, and other medical conditions.
The CDC adds that the numbers are based on death certificates, which according to them are the most reliable source of data.
“Death certificates reportedly contain information that is not available anywhere else and includes comorbid conditions, race and ethnicity and place of death,” as reported by News Channel 8.
Furthermore, in a detailed investigation by FOX 11 Channel in America on how death counts are done and if hospitals received more money for COVID-19 deaths, the claims were debunked. For example, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services says it follows the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for counting COVID-19 deaths which includes counting deaths that list COVID-19 as both an immediate and underlying cause of death. Additionally, Calumet County’s medical examiner, Mike Klaeser and Bellin Health Physician Dr. Robert Mead both agreed that COVID-19 can be listed as the immediate or underlying cause of death on a certificate making the CDC’s data accurate.
Concerning the payment of money for COVID-19 deaths, the US government provided a coronavirus relief legislation which created a 20% premium, or add-on, for COVID-19 Medicare patients only. This 20% add-on from the CARES Act is only for services provided by hospitals (and not deaths as claimed) which are averaged to be about $35,000 per patient on a ventilator. There have been no public reports that hospitals or individuals are receiving 19,000 for COVID-19 deaths.
Claim 7: As I speak, Belgium and Holland have stopped planes from Britain from landing
Even though UK flights were banned for a few days in Belgium and Holland in December, it is unclear when exactly the claimant made those claims. However, when the video was posted in March, those travel bans had been lifted by both countries.
Verification
In December 2020, several news reports such as from the BBC, France 24 and Sky News showed that the European Union including Belgium and Holland temporarily banned flights from the UK as a precautionary measure to prevent the new variant of COVID-19 found in the UK from entering their borders.
In Belgium, the ban on UK flights lasted for two days on 21 and 22 December, 2020, while in Holland, the ban is stated by the government to have lasted from 20 December to latest 1 January 2021.
Claim 8: We are being deceived because there are a lot of photos showing the syringe on people’s skin but it has been closed.
The photos in circulation are a demonstration and not the real vaccination.
Verification
This claim has been debunked by Teyit in Turkey and published by Poynter, explaining that all such photos and videos in circulation which started from Twitter are only a demonstration of the process, not the actual vaccination.
Claim 9: There is a COVID vaccine which states ‘Not for use in Canada, America, and Europe.’
The claim in question has already been debunked by Dubawa.
Verification
In our investigations, we found that the vaccine being associated with this claim is ‘Remdesivir’, which in truth, is not even a COVID-19 vaccine, more so a vaccine specially made for Africans. Remdesivir is an antiviral drug found helpful in treating COVID-19 patients which shortened recovery periods. The drug has generic versions which have the same components (such as Covifor) produced for countries in other regions of the world, including Africa.
Gilead, the manufacturers of Remdesivir, explained that the inscription that the drug is not to be distributed in the U.S, Canada, and European Union countries, only indicated restrictions in where the licensees of the drug could distribute it. A spokesperson at Hetero Labs (one of the companies to ensure the distribution of the drug in 127 countries) similarly explained that it was to prevent it from being sold illegally on the black market.
“We think that this photo is part of a malicious campaign to create confusion around this drug,” the Hetero Labs spokesperson said.
Claim 10: America, Britain, and Europe have signed a contract with pharmaceutical companies giving them legal immunity.
Some pharmaceutical companies have been given legal immunity from American, British, and European governments.
Verification
In America, a CNBC report shows that the U.S government has granted pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna immunity to lawsuits in situations where something unexpected goes wrong with their vaccines. This, according to a Dallas labor and employment attorney, Rogge Dunn, is very rare for such a blanket immunity law to be passed. This is because pharmaceutical companies are not offered much liability protection under the law.
“If you experience severe side effects after getting a Covid vaccine, lawyers tell CNBC there is basically no one to blame in a U.S. court of law,” the report stated.
Similarly, in Britain, an Independent report , shows that the UK government has given Pfizer protection from being sued ahead of the roll out of its vaccine across the country.
However in Europe, a Reuters report revealed that under different terms to a deal struck with Sanofi, European governments will bear some of the cost of claims of side-effects from AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, however, above an agreed limit.
“Unexpected side-effects after a drug has regulatory approval are rare, but the speed at which a COVID-19 vaccine is being pursued increases the risks of unforeseen conditions. The deal with AstraZeneca, which shifts some of the risks involved in the roll-out of a vaccine to taxpayers, was struck in August and its liability clauses have not previously been reported,” the report added.
Prior to this, the Financial Times reported that European pharmaceutical companies’ vaccines had lobbied to the European Union for their members to be protected from lawsuits in case of any problems with the vaccines, given the speed and scale of development of vaccines which may have inevitable risks.
Claim 11: 87,000 nurses in the Netherlands, Holland, have signed petitions to not be vaccinated.
This has been proven to be misleading as the numbers are a speculation based on a poll.
Verification
According to a fact-check by VoxCheck Ukraine and Netherlands published on Poynter there has been no official refusal by medical staff to get COVID-19 vaccine in the Netherlands. The check concluded that the numbers are a speculation based on a poll conducted on plans of the government to offer the first vaccine to health workers, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions.
In this report by DutchNews for example, it revealed that a survey conducted showed that only one third of the members of nursing union Nu’91 say they will not accept being vaccinated against coronavirus while just over a third (36%) said they would agree to be vaccinated and the rest were not sure.
In total, 3,300 out of 30,000 union members took part in the survey, which highlights the different attitudes to the vaccine across the medical sector.
Claim 12: The nurse who fainted on camera after being vaccinated died as they couldn’t find her to bring her forward to speak after.
The nurse who fainted during a live press interview after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination jab on 17 December 2020 is alive and was revived shortly after her fainting.
Verification
The nurse, Tiffany Dover is a critical care nurse at Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Both Dover herself and CHI Memorial Hospital have confirmed that she is alive and well.
After her live press interview which showed her fainting, in an interview with WRCB Chattanooga, Dover explained that she has a history of overactive vagal response that causes her to feel weak, dizzy and disoriented when she experiences pain, which was what happened after she was injected with the vaccine which subsequently made her faint.
“I feel fine now, and the pain in my arm is very minimal, actually,” Dover said.
Furthermore, CHI Memorial Hospital has stated a number of times that Dover is alive and well. On 19 December, the hospital confirmed this in a tweet,
“Nurse Tiffany Dover appreciates the concern shown for her. She is home and doing well. She asks for privacy for her and her family,” the hospital said.
In addition, the vice president of marketing communications at CHI Memorial Hospital, Lisa McCluskey, told Associated Press that the claims stating Dover is dead are bogus. She further confirmed that Dover was feeling well and was working a shift at the hospital that day 21 December.
Claim 13: California and about 10 states of the US said Blacks and Spanish people should be the first to be vaccinated and Melinda Gates also said that she doesn’t want the poor nations to be cheated, so we should start with the poor nations.
There have been no reports by American states indicating Blacks and Hispanics must be vaccinated first. Rather, priority is given to health workers and persons with underlying health conditions across the country with Blacks and Hispanics forming a low percentage.
Verification
While a report from the Washington Post shows that not many US states are recording racial and ethnical data to assess the fair distribution of vaccines, a report from Reuters also shows that Blacks and Hispanics are receiving a smaller portion of vaccines among the representation among healthcare workers and nursing home residents which are part of the priority groups for the COVID-19 inoculation.
The Reuters report stated the data from the CDC which revealed the percentages of vaccination among Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites.
“Blacks received 5.4% of shots reported with race/ethnicity data, despite national data showing they made up 16% of healthcare workers and 14% of nursing home residents, two groups prioritized for the first wave of vaccinations. Hispanics received 11.5% of the shots, according to the available data, while making up 13% of healthcare workers and 5% of nursing home residents. Whites received 60.4% of shots and accounted for 60% of healthcare workers and 75% of nursing home residents”.
Melinda Gates mentioned in an interview with Time magazine in 2020 that in the US, Black people and many people of colour should be considered next in priority for vaccination after health care workers, given the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on Black people.
Conclusion
The claims in the 17-minute 5-second video made by the Twi-speaking man have a single narrative to pitch vaccines against Africans or the Black community. Most of these claims, circulating in other countries already and have already been investigated in detail by other fact-checkers, were found to be false. However, the claims which were found to be true are misleadingly placed in the context of discussion to dissuade Africans from being vaccinated while the rest of the claims remain unsupported and unproven by evidence. The claimant makes a few true, and a lot of false and unsubstantiated claims about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.
Claim: Cruise ships are only evacuating Caribbeans who have been vaccinated
The Vincentian Prime Minister gave this evacuation order, following precautions to allow cruise ships to transport Vincentian residents to neighbouring island countries.
“The Chief Medical Officer will be identifying persons who are already vaccinated so that we can get them on the ship,” Gonsalves said in a press conference.
Gonsalves added that the cruise ships were volunteering to transport Vincentian residents to neighbouring islands Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Lucia; however, only COVID-19 vaccinated persons would be allowed onto the cruise ships out of caution. He explained that the ships did not have enough personnel to keep people on the ships but the ships had enough personnel to transport passengers.
He also assured that thousands of people who have not yet been vaccinated remained on land on Friday and are staying at local hotels in safe zones.
The claim that cruise ships are only evacuating Caribbeans who have been vaccinated is true. The Vincentian Prime Minister gave this evacuation order out of precaution to allow these cruise ships working voluntarily to transport Vincentian residents to neighbouring island countries.
Are you a student in a tertiary institution in Ghana? Are you passionate about fact-checking and journalism?
Then this is for you.
The Ghana office of Dubawa, an independent and non-partisan transnational fact-checking platform and a project of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), is accepting applications from students in tertiary institutions across Ghana to its Campus Fact-checking Project.
Dubawa’s Campus Fact-checking Project is inspired by the need to address some of the ethical lapses identified in journalism practice by offering students in tertiary schools aspiring to take up roles in the ecosystem, the opportunity to acquire real-world experience in the journalism profession through verification and fact-checking.
The maiden campus project also seeks to extend the culture of truth-telling in the information ecosystem to tertiary institutions by training and equipping journalism students with the necessary skills to contribute to fact-checking and promote a culture of truth and accuracy in public discourse.
Objectives of the Project
This project’s primary objective is to promote a culture of verification and fact-checking among journalism and other liberal arts students and offer them a platform to prepare them for their role in the media industry. Other objectives include:
To build a network of student fact-checkers who will lead the fight against misinformation and disinformation in their various schools in Ghana.
To create awareness and promote a culture of verification and fact-checking among communication and journalism students.
To offer students in tertiary institutions, especially those in the field of communications and journalism, insights into, and the practice of fact-checking journalism.
Benefits of the Project
Participants will gain hands-on experience in fact-checking and by extension, journalism
Selected students will have the opportunity to join Dubawa’s network of campus fact-checkers and also contribute fact-check reports to Dubawa’s platform with modest remuneration
Eligibility Criteria
The project’s primary target is students in Communications, Media or English departments in tertiary institutions. However, students in other fields of study interested in careers in journalism and fact-checking may also apply. Applicants should therefore be
Students in tertiary institutions (universities and polytechnics etc) in Ghana.
Students who exhibit good writing skills, analytical and critical thinking, and awareness of current issues will be highly encouraged.
How to Apply
Interested applicants should submit their applications by 26 April 2021.
Like every line of work, audience engagement or feedback is beneficial to the impact of the work of fact-checkers. At a recent International Fact-checking Network (IFCN) webinar moderated by Harrison Mantas on International Fact-checking Day discussing the subject, ‘’The fact-check connection; engaging the audiences we serve”, it was highlighted that a fact-checker’s work was only as good as how it was received. The different layers to this statement are unpacked in the Audience Reception Theory that forms a basis in predicting and understanding how audiences engage with our media products as fact-checkers. With this insight, fact-checkers understand how a segmented audience interprets content in order for fact-checkers to subsequently better defend the content or persuade such audiences.
In view of this, in this article, we broach the question we get asked so often, “How has the Ghanaian audience received your fact-checks?”. Even though a more robust scientific study would be ideal to answer this question, we attempt to scratch the surface of this question by showing a few audience engagements with some of our checks.
When we launched Dubawa in Ghana a year ago, we knew there was a gap to be filled in consideration of the confounding information ecosystem; however, it was premature at the time to determine whether audiences would come to terms with this form of journalism that seeks to make everyone cautious and accountable with the way they put information out. Whether from stump speeches, press briefings, media reports, social media posts, or WhatsApp broadcasts, every potentially misleading content was under our scrutiny for fact-checking.
Subsequently, we have observed at Dubawa Ghana that audience reception, showing mostly in their reactions and comments to our publications, has been report-specific. In addition to this, we define audiences within a context, the subject matter, their interests, and affiliations.
Therefore, we have outlined a few of the reactions by audiences to our fact-check reports so far, as follows:
Appreciation
A number of victims of misinformation who have stated the effects misinformation has had on them have commended the work of Dubawa in promoting truth in the society. At a recently held webinar organised by Dubawa detailed in this article, these victims of misinformation revealed the emotional unrest and public mistrust misinformation causes, thus necessitating the work of fact-checkers in assuaging these effects.
Verbal abuse
With fact-checks that exposed the untruths of persons such as the report on Dr UN and purported affiliations with Harvard, UN and Kofi Annan, Dubawa was verbally abused with insulting words by the persons implicated in the report. However, the motivation to let discerning audiences not fall prey to such scam was enough to overlook such abuses.
Particularly for members and foot soldiers of political parties who had sworn allegiance to their parties, fact-check reports did not seem to be enough to dissuade them from their pre-existing beliefs. An example of this was observed in comments on the fact-check report of the doctored video alleging that Akufo-Addo received a $40,000 bribe as president, where some audiences insisted that the video supported the claim.
Deletion of posts
We have considered this reaction to be a somewhat compliant behaviour by such persons in line with the furtherance of only truth on online platforms. The deletion of posts has been a reaction particularly with content which were fact-checked by Dubawa and flagged as false by Facebook through our third-party fact-checking agreement.
Jest
In a recent publication showing that sucking your partners breast does not reduce the risk of breast cancer, audiences (mostly male) have wittily queried this report and stated that they will persevere in their already established beliefs. Going through the quote tweets to this post on Twitter, the repeated question and statement thrown at Dubawa for debunking this claim was that no one asked us to investigate this and that women were not complaining.
What Dubawa has not yet encountered is the misuse of our fact-checks, which we are aware some fact-checkers face. By this, the actors in the report mischaracterize fact-checks and use them as tools for their propagandist agenda or to further their confirmation bias. These are some of the negative effects fact-checking some claims can have, which we believe fact-checkers should look out for, and counter when necessary.
Understandably, audiences vary and such variety broadly influences how they receive fact-checks and consequently react to them. And Dubawa has equally been served with these varied audience receptions and reactions to our reports.
COVID-19 vaccination programmes are underway across the world. In Africa, more than half of the countries on the continent have either received their first consignment of vaccines or have already started vaccinating their citizens. It is in light of this ongoing global vaccination discourse that a South-African based tweet which has been retweeted onto Ghanaian Twitter timeline is alleging that the government of Malawi ordered vaccines from Zimbabwe and instead, a huge rock was delivered to them.
Perfectly fitting into the narrative of Nigerians expressing their frustration over Buhari’s UK travel were social media posts that claimed that some Nigerians had gathered in the UK ahead of Buhari’s arrival to force him to go back to Nigeria. However, we found that the photos fuelling the claim are from different unrelated events that happened between 2019 and 2020, and there is no information or evidence to confirm that some Nigerians have gathered in the UK to send Buhari back on his arrival in London.
A claim resurfacing on the Internet which has existed as far back as 10 years ago, suggests that women having their partners suck their breasts reduces the risk of breast cancer. By speaking to health experts and reviewing studies, we found that having your partner suck on your breasts will not prevent or reduce chances of developing breast cancer. However, it may help identify changes in the breast, prompting further tests to ascertain if one has breast cancer.
