A coalition of civil society organizations erroneously claimed that media coverage of President Muhammadu Buhari’s rejection of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill was fake news in a press release disseminated on social media. The group explicitly referenced the Daily Sun, which reported on December 9, 2021, that President Buhari had rejected the Electoral Amendment Bill over N500 billion logistics costs for monitoring political parties’ primaries in a story titled “Buhari Rejects Electoral Bill.”
Exposing the holes in CSOs fake news theory on the Bill
Published in Vanguard, the coalition of CSOs represented by Ariyo-Dare Atoye of the Adopt A Goal Initiative; Jude Feranmi of the Raising New Voices Initiative; and Kenneth Eze of the Speak Out Africa Initiative, claimed that “The interview granted by one of the APC governors published as news and stating that Mr. President has rejected the bill based on the phantom N500 billion costs of logistics for monitoring the direct primaries of political parties is a barefaced LIE.”
Several people shared the statement, headlined “CSOs condemn alleged fake news on Buhari’s rejection of Electoral Bill,” on social media, mainly Twitter and Facebook. A part of the statement reads: “Fellow Nigerians, we woke up this morning (Thursday) to the FAKE NEWS HEADLINE by The Sun Newspapers which read ‘Buhari Rejects Electoral Bill. This hatchet job carried out by some crooked persons to misinform Nigerians and mislead the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is shameless and unfortunate.”
Also, a recurrent theme in the press release by the CSOs coalition is that Daily Sun’s report was politically-motivated. “Nigerians in the rural areas who are not privy to national events would continue to be misled by devious politicians and crooked newspaper editors should this vacuum continue to exist,” the statement read.
The National House of Representatives (HoR) also denied the report through its Spokesperson, Benjamin Kalu, who stated that there was no such communication from the President to the parliament and that it was merely a figment of lobbyists’ imaginations who wanted the Bill’s contents changed.
However, the Daily Sun said in the report that it spoke with a senator who revealed that the Bill had been returned to the Senate and the House of Representatives in a letter written to the two principal officials. According to the source, the President cited the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) exorbitant cost of conducting direct primaries, which he estimates to be over N500 billion.
Interestingly, nearly two weeks after the Daily Sun’s report, ChannelsTV published a letter from the President to the National Assembly, which indicated something similar. In the letter, the President said that “…the conduct of elections for the nomination of party candidates solely via direct primaries as envisaged by the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 has serious adverse legal, financial, economic and security consequences which cannot be accommodated at the moment considering our Nation’s peculiarities.”
Several news outlets, including The Guardian, Premium Times, TheCable, and Vanguard have since reported that the President refused to sign the bill because it would ‘“entail significant legal, financial, economic and security consequences.” However, a search on the National Assembly website reveals that there is little information regarding the Bill. The website simply says that Senator Ovie Omo-Agege is the sponsor of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, which passed its first reading on October 29, 2019.
In reaction to the coalition’s post, Eze Hanson, a tech expert, said: “Nowadays, people can readily access endless internet-based media thanks to technological advances and social media. This makes it easy for anyone to use “Fake News” to blame adversarial political and media targets. Sadly, this may make the distinction between conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation more difficult to discern.”
T. U. Odoma, Esq, a Nigerian lawyer, argues that ethical issues, political predispositions, and the ease with which digital technology can be deployed all contribute to the weaponization of fake news. “CSOs are expected to promote good governance in a politically impartial and non-accusatory manner. I believe that an increased likelihood of providing a politicized and accusatory response to fake news is linked to perceptions of its prevalence, partisanship strength, and political interests, he says.”
TechCity has looked into the claim by the coalition of CSOs that the rejection of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill by President Buhari was “fake news” and found it to be false.
This article was produced with mentorship from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI), to tackle disinformation that undermines our democracies, as part of an initiative by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) and Code for Africa (CfA). Visit http://academy.africa/aaosi for more information.”
