The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction has labelled the widespread information about a supposed N50,000 Child Support Grant for all Nigerian parents making the rounds on social media as fake.
The director of Information in the ministry, Mrs Rhoda Iliya, described the information as fake in a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday.
The statement also warned the public to be cautious to avoid falling prey to scammers.
”This is a scam trending on social media and the Ministry has tagged it as fake news. “We are not aware of this registration portal if the ministry will undertake such programmes there will be a proper enlightenment.
”Nigerians should be careful, don’t be a victim of these scammers on social media.”Also alert your families, friends, and well-wishers not to apply, ” the statement added.
Recall that there have been several posts circulating on various social media platforms, claiming that the Nigerian government is giving all parents a child support grant of N50,000 following complaints about the high cost of food.
AfricaCheck, a fact-check organisation had early May labelled the purported message as fake, adding that the same message had earlier circulated in South Africa and Kenya in January 2024 and was since then tagged as fake.
The post partly reads “Due to high level of complaints from Nigerian parents on the high cost of feeding their children, *President Bola Ahmed Tinubu* have urged that the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation *Betta C. Edu* should open the CHILD SUPPORT scheme. Every Nigerian parent is entitled to receive the sum of ₦50,000 for 6 months.”
AfricaCheck revealed their tactics which is to embed a link in the post and ask you to click on it to register, the link then takes you to a suspicious website where they would try to obtain private data which keeps you at risk of being scammed subsequently.