This war on fact-checking

In August 2020, a certain separatist leader with hundreds of thousands of followers from around the world, hosted a Facebook live where he asked his supporters to find me and deal with me. This Facebook live had an average of 1,200 people watching at every minute. It had raked in tens of thousands of views in a few hours.

Within those hours, I started receiving death threats from his disciples, who shared his beliefs and point of view. What was my offence? This separatist leader, whom you may know, tried everything within his power to make Nigerians and the rest of the world believe that President Muhammadu Buhari was dead and had been replaced by Jibril from Sudan. Five years down the line, it is almost unthinkable that there were educated people — journalists alike — who believed Buhari indeed died and was replaced by a lookalike or a clone.

My offence was that I did not believe that Buhari was dead — there was no evidence to support the claim. I’m not a fan of Buhari, and much of my work shows that clearly. However, I will not join the herd to say he was dead. My job as a fact-checker required that I put the facts out — whether I liked them or not. In 2016, after a report I did on Budget padding, Tolu Ogunlesi, whom I greatly admire as an alum of my alma mater, blocked me on Twitter. Not long after, I published a fact-check on Reno Omokri’s disinformation, and in a similar fashion, the former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan also blocked me on Twitter. Many more people have followed in that stead, but I’m always happy to state the facts as they can be publicly proven — the same was true for this separatist leader.

Former president Buhari was sick, away from the country for months in Yar’Adua style, but he was not dead, and he is still very much alive today. This separatist leader did not like that I said he was lying, so he asked his boys to find me and do the unthinkable.

The organisations I have worked with supported me; provided security, offered mental health experts, and were understanding of my way of handling the issue. When our fact-checks showed that the claims by the separatist leader were false repeatedly,  Facebook decided to take down his account. Before now, I had never written expressly about what all these did to me mentally or physically. How I had to watch over my shoulder anywhere I went. How I had to carefully choose my style of clothing, how I sat close to the door in public spaces, and how work came with its own anxiety.

OPPOSITION AS A SECOND SKIN

These pushbacks have become a second skin for me. In Nigeria, I was fortunate to become one of the first dedicated fact-checkers. When I, and the great team at TheCable, ran the first live fact-check of a presidential debate in our country’s history in 2018, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) mounted opposition to the work we had done. We were not without our flaws, but what we did opened new vistas for fact-checking in our country.

In 2016, I had a running with a minister who denied what she had said, and I had reported it, but a video of the event saved my reputation and career.  By 2018, when former President Buhari also said Nigerian youths were uneducated and wanted to “sit and do nothing”, I broke that story and Femi Adesina, the president’s media adviser, whom I also respect a lot, said we were “mischief makers” playing “irresponsible politics”. I did not join issues with him, nor did we refuse to publish his side of the story, we simply shared the video of what Buhari had said.

He had a job, I had my job. I wouldn’t respect him if he didn’t do his job, I also wouldn’t like myself if I neglected my own duty. My ways have not changed — I still stick to the facts and remain familiar with opposition. As my boss says, Fellow Nigerians, it’s all politics.

This opposition, which fact-checking still faces today, is my second skin.

A NEW DAY IS UPON US

Since President Donald Trump took office in the United States, a lot of things have changed; some will argue that this has been for good, and others will say it has been net-negative. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced the termination of its fact-checking programme. Fact-checkers became the sacrificial lambs, the Biblical scapegoat to be sent into the wilderness on the day of atonement for Meta before Lord Donald Trump.

For the fact-checking community worldwide, the war has grown; malign actors are seizing the opportunity to target fact-checkers,   smear campaigns continue to drive disinformation and mal-information. When fact-checkers speak up, these actors say your complaints are because your funding was cut and a new sheriff is in town. In the short term, people may believe them, but we know this song, we’ve sung this chorus too many times, and come funds, come propaganda, the fact must keep going.

A new day is upon us, but we must remember that same principles still apply; we must drive ourselves to keep the torch burning and the flag flying, remembering that from now till the end of time, facts will matter.

For without facts, we are nothing but barbrians.

You can reach ‘Mayowa on Twitter @OluwamayowaTJ