UberFacts, a popular fact-sharing platform, has clarified that it did not receive any payment to share information about Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s alleged involvement in narcotics trafficking with the U.S. authorities thirty years ago.
The platform stated this in response to attacks from Mr Tinubu’s supporters who accused it of being a propaganda account that caters to the highest bidder.
On Monday, UberFacts tweeted that Mr Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, had surrendered $460,000 to the U.S. government in 1993 after a Chicago court found that the income was from heroin trafficking.
The platform attached documents from the United States Court to its tweet to buttress its claim.
In a tweet on Wednesday evening, UberFacts clarified that it obtained the information from public records available on the court’s website.
The tweet from UberFacts has generated a lot of reactions from Mr Tinubu’s supporters, who call themselves ‘Batists.’
They accused the platform of being paid to tarnish the president-elect’s image, but they did not contest the content of the documents.
In response to the attacks, UberFacts reiterated that it did not receive any payment to share the information.
Bayo Onanuga, a media aide to Mr Tinubu, also criticized UberFacts in a tweet.
He described the platform as a “notorious Twitter account” that shares “random tweeting of falsehood and ‘the most unimportant things you’ll never need to know.'”
He added that the platform had been dismissed as unreliable, and he expressed surprise that some Nigerians were taking it seriously.
Article updated 2 months ago. Content is written and modified by multiple authors.
