FALSE: This Facebook account offering Kenyans KSh 40,000 for COVID-19 relief is fake
The post claims that the funds are from President Uhuru Kenyatta, and asks those interested to pay a registration fee
A Facebook account claiming to offer cash relief of KSh 40,000 to Kenyans in distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is FAKE.
The account bears the name and image of President Uhuru Kenyatta, but the president’s name is wrongly spelt as “Kenyetta” instead of Kenyatta, raising questions about its authenticity.
The posts ask Kenyans to pay a registration fee of KSh 2,500, and to call the ‘manager’ in order to receive the KSh 40,000 cash relief.
The mobile number listed for the manager in question shows up as ‘Zadock Naty’ on Truecaller.
Government spokesperson Cyrus Oguna stated that both the page and the post are not legitimate.
In a phone interview with PesaCheck, Colonel Oguna said the page is not managed by President Kenyatta, nor is he running such an initiative.
On March 22, 2019, President Kenyatta suspended all his social media accounts.
The World Health Organization has consistently warned against scammers who are taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to steal private information and money.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook page claiming to belong to President Uhuru Kenyatta and offering Kshs 40,000 as COVID-19 relief funds to Kenyans and finds it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker James Okong’o and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
