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The incumbent president of Africa's largest democracy was forced to refute repeated claims that he had died and a clone was now running his office.
Welcome to the Nigerian election season, where misinformation and propaganda are nothing new. Lolade Nwanze, journalist and head of digital operations for Guardian Nigeria, said false information "had been on steroids".
In this context, she speaks of false information – stories that are entirely composed or shared out of context.
"It was completely false, no proof, but a random tweet.In 10 minutes, we had a thousand retweets of people saying," Yes! I knew he was corrupt! "(…) No one is looking for evidence, it's no longer true," he told CNN.
Relatives of political parties also use false information to extol the achievements of their candidates and score political points.
Lauretta Onochie, a close aide to President Buhari, has been called on Twitter several times for exchanging false information about her verified account.
However, months later, Onochie published a tweet accusing opposition leader Atiku Abubakar of sharing food and money at one of his election rallies. Onochie published an image of food packets with money attached to them, saying, "Keep them in poverty, then give them money." Atiku to Sokoto yesterday. "
"It's notorious, it's the same format for everyone: half lies, half-truths, we demystify it, and it pokes fun at it and moves on to the next, it's pretty consistent."
Onochie did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
Nwanze is part of a team of journalists from 15 news outlets who have joined forces to eliminate false information.
It has about fifty journalists who share allegations of false information and try to distinguish facts from fiction.
"Basically, we identify claims and publications that we badume are wrong, then we examine them, and then we publish the truth," says Nwanze.
Some stories are easier to check than others. For example, a member of the CrossCheck team discovered that an account linked to the Democratic People's Party (PDP) on Facebook had published an image of President Trump, seeming to support PDP leader Abubakar Atiku.
A simple reverse image search on Google showed that the image appeared for the first time during the 2016 US presidential election campaign.
CrossCheck quickly posted a rebuttal on its website and social media sites. The team also noted trends during the electoral cycle.
"There are handles and pages on Facebook that are really notorious," says Nwanze.
"One of them tells a story, the same story is reproduced in three or four pages, and that's how they widen their reach."
Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have been criticized for the proliferation of false information on their sites.
However, they say that they are working hard to stem the flow of false information.
Facebook said in a statement to CNN that it was monitoring and still taking action against false accounts and that it was continuing to invest heavily in human resources and technology to prevent abuse. The social media platform recognizes that she can always do more.
Twitter, for its part, says it works closely with the Nigeria Electoral Commission to facilitate reporting of problems, and prioritize the "health of public conversation during election cycles".
"We use specially engineered technology to bring out relevant content first and proactively combat the malicious spread of large-scale misinformation," the statement said.
On sites such as Twitter, where users have named accounts, it is possible to locate and close descriptors that generate false information.
But on WhatsApp, the omnipresent messaging service in Africa, it is particularly difficult to establish the source of false information because of the end-to-end encryption of the platform.
An eight-year-old CNN report on arms smuggling in Nigeria during the elections, filmed in the run-up to the 2011 elections, was recently shared on WhatsApp as if it were a recent event. 39, a story of the day.
CNN saw WhatsApp messages that showed how the report was being broadcast as it related to the 2019 elections.
A WhatsApp spokesperson told CNN that the encrypted nature of the messaging service meant that the company did not have access to its content.
However, he said he has implemented a "sophisticated machine learning system", which helps him to detect abusive behavior and to ban suspicious accounts.
"We are removing more than two million accounts per month for bulk or automated behavior, and we are constantly moving into our anti-abuse operations to keep our platform secure," the statement said.
WhatsApp, which belongs to Facebook, also posted ads on the radio and in newspapers in Nigeria before the elections, encouraging people to "share the joy, not the rumors".
The motivation of those who shared the old CNN report is not known. But in Africa, elections can often be a matter of life and death.
The dissemination of false information – particularly on the proliferation of weapons – could have deadly consequences.
This is why initiatives such as CrossCheck are so important. Despite all his efforts, Nwanze is the first to admit that his work is a "drop in the ocean" to counter those who are determined to spread false stories.
"It's really annoying because these people seem to work day and night," Nwanze says.
In any case, there seems to be little appetite for truth among those who peddle false information. When CrossCheck volunteers have established a fictional story, they contact the author and encourage him to publish a new verified version.
Most do not do it.
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