Thread by @henkvaness

Here is a nice verification exercise. @DrIsaPantami
the Nigerian communication minister is reported to be on a US watchlist and is trending in Nigeria. Is this a rumor or truth? Start with this article: niyitabiti.net/2021/04/us-pla…

Explain why you think this is correct or not (2/..)

Try to work two ways: can you find the original source (patient zero) who said it first? And can you find stuff from US gov that supports the claim? (3/3)

Here is the solution. First, double-check my claim that the topic is trending on Twitter. twitter-trends.iamrohit.in/nigeria will do, slightly better, although more ads, is getdaytrends.com/nigeria/trend/… We do see that @DrIsaPantami is trending the last few hours. But who started the fire? (4/.)

First, let's see if the US GOV is talking about the person. If we would use his own profile data, nothing happens (5/..)

But that is normal. I use 10 different ways of finding a name, here is how. So we should go for variations in the name, right ? (6/...)

The name the CIA used, is Ali Isa PANTAMI. He is listed in a document that is updated in 2019. This is a list (capitals by CIA) of CHIEFS OF STATE/ CABINET MEMBERS/ FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS. Not a watch list.. (7/...)

When your done checking all the name variations, you can see that there are no US gov sites that put our subject on a watch list. So let's go to the original Nigerian source now (7/...)

Go to my whopostedwhat.com and check the billions of Facebook posting on ""Ibrahim" "watch list" and go back in time till you don't see the news anymore. The "patient 0" date on Facebook is April 11. (8/...)

Here you have some postings (mobile users: login into FB needed) facebook.com/search/posts/?… As you can see, there is no source. The minister is "said to be" a very close confidant to the assassinated leader of Boko Haram (9/...)

But hey, we can copy and paste that into Google. One of the postings, nairaland.com/6502163/minist…, is referring to the original (?) source: independent.ng/disquiet-as-am… (10/...)

The lead reads:
There is disquiet in the land at the weekend follow­ing an allegation that the Minister of Com­munications and Digital Economy, Alhaji Isa Ali Ibrahim, also known as Sheikh Pantami, has fall­en on the watch list of the America’s Intelligence Service. (11/...)

Who is the source? Oops, it's a major newspaper in Nigeria. The Independent is a successor to the Diet newspaper established in 1997 by James Ibori, a close friend of the military ruler General Sani Abacha (says Wiki) (12/...)

But IS this the original source? Go back with Google --~>Tools and you will see. No. There was an earlier source. Check (13/...)

Now check newswirengr.com manually. Oops.. unreachable, at the time of writing. You can see in the snippet of Google they regret what they said: (14/...)

And there you have it: it was a hoax that the guy was on a US list (maybe the other facts are true, but he is not a public gov list). Meanwhile in Nigeria, the story rose from #3 to #2 on the trending list (15/15) (End)

It's official. Hey newswire from Nigeria, next time just apply some basic #osint skills : ) (16/..)

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