FACT-CHECK: Were Trucks Loaded with Old Naira Notes ‘Belonging to Tinubu’ Intercepted in Lagos?

FACT-CHECK: Were Trucks Loaded with Old Naira Notes ‘Belonging to Tinubu’ Intercepted in Lagos?

CLAIM: A Facebook post appeared online claiming that eight forty-feet containers loaded with old naira notes leaving Tinubu’s house for the bank were intercepted in Lagos on Saturday, January 28, 2023.

FULL-TEXT: The post showing two trucks allegedly loaded with old naira notes and a few dollars in bundles accompanied by Tinubu’s picture appeared on many platforms including Igbo Times Magazine, “Daily Trust Hausa” and Hausa Linzami among others.

The post reads:

“Breaking News: 8 forty-fit container loads with cash captured leaving Tinubu Lagos house to Bank.

“8 forty-fit container truck loaded with old Naira notes has been captured leaving Tinubu Lagos house to bank [sic]. Video here…”

VERIFICATION: PRNigeria ran a reverse image search of the two trucks and results revealed that the trailer in the queue as seen in the post was a picture used by an online news outlet which was associated to a story on the requirements for a Zimbabwe citizen to legally drive a truck in South Africa.

While the other vehicle standing in front of a house as portrayed was a picture of one of the six trailers of rice donated to Delta communities by the Group Chairman of UBA Group and Heirs Tony Elumelu during the lockdown period necessitated by COVID-19 in April 2020.

However, the picture of the old naira notes and a few dollars in bunches was used by the Punch and other blogs in their last year’s story about the naira redesignation and cashless policy.

Meanwhile, further verification by PRNigeria revealed that the Daily Trust Hausa page has been officially denied by Media Trust Limited publishers of Daily Trust as a fake Facebook page used for illegal activities on Social Media.

In a disclaimer in January 2022, Daily Trust Lamented that “the page, which is a cloned version of Aminiya, the Hausa publication of Media Trust, has been copying stories from original Daily Trust platforms and posting other contents under the impression that they are from this media organization.”

Meanwhile, the spokesperson of APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) Bayo Onanuga accused PDP Of Creating Parody Account To Discredit Tinubu in a statement published in Politics Digest.

“We want to alert Nigerians to the sinister moves and orchestrated plans of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party to unleash a wave of fake news, especially in the Hausa language to malign, defame and delegitimize Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC before Nigerians.

“This scurrilous campaign by the PDP has already been perfected with a dedicated team working day and night from the PDP national headquarters at Wadata House, Abuja. The party has also recruited many social media actors to carry out the campaign of calumny by proxy.”

CONCLUSION: The fact gathered did not provide any evidence of the alleged “Containers loaded with old naira notes belonging to Tinubu.”

PRNigeria, therefore, concludes that the claim is lacking in evidence and basis and is therefore FALSE.