IN SHORT: If you vote for Nigeria’s ruling party candidate, N10,000 awaits you, say posts on Facebook disguised as warnings against vote-buying. Don’t click on them.
As votes are counted in Nigeria shortly after the 25 February 2023 election, posts on social media claim that some candidates offered to buy votes in the “do or die” affair that is politics.
Nigeria voted for a president and federal lawmakers.
One user claims they were offered N10,000 “to vote for Bola Tinubu” via the messaging service WhatsApp.
Bola Tinubu is the candidate for the governing All Progressives Congress party. The message has also been published on Facebook, such as here and here.
Posts are engagement bait
The post reads: “Vote-buying has gone to another level.” But it then shares a link asking Facebook users to “apply now”.
The link leads to a webpage with the headline “10,000 naira campaign funds for Nigeria, vote for Tinubu”.
The site has an application form that asks for details such as telephone numbers, addresses and bank details.
After filling out the form, the site instructs users to share the link with five groups or 15 contacts on WhatsApp.
This is engagement bait: social media posts that ask people to interact with them by liking, commenting or sharing. It increases the reach of the post but offers no reward. It could also be an attempt to steal valuable personal information.
Africa Check has uncovered several of these scams. Read our guide on how to avoid these scams here.
Allegations of vote-buying are also one of the possible misinformation tactics to watch out for during an election.