FACT-CHECK: Atiku’s Abuja home was not besieged by DSS

A claim which says the leading opposition presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar’s Abuja residence was besieged by policemen and men of the Department of State Security (DSS) on Wednesday was false and a deliberate hoax, a fact-check report by the CrossCheck Nigeria has revealed.

A number of online publications had claimed that Atiku was on Wednesday, January 30, besieged by members of police and men of the Department of State Services in his Abuja residence.

The claim was first made by Hope for Nigeria and later duplicated by Facebook pages Dailymail Gist and Atikulated.

In four hours, the post had been shared on HFN’s Facebook page 499 times with 153 comments while the other pages had lesser interaction. Hope for Nigeria has 682,285 followers.

Upon investigation, CCN found the claim to be false and a deliberate hoax for the following reasons:

1. At the time of the report, Atiku was meeting with business men in Lagos whereas the story alleges that he was sieged in his Abuja home.
2. The report claimed that the ex-VP tweeted about the incident whereas a crawl on Atiku’s Twitter page over the last 24 hours has no such information.
3. The HFN web article completely plagiarizes an April 23, 2018 Vanguard report titled, ‘Police, DSS take over residence of Senator Dino Melaye’.
4. The image used in the story first appeared online in January 2016 when the EFCC sealed Sambo Dasuki’s house.