The minister says the page is an impostor.
And post Facebook bearing the image and name of the Beninese Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Jean Michel Abimbola and claiming to offer financial assistance is a CANULAR.
A post on the page asks: “ If we immediately give you 200,000 FCFA, what are you going to invest in? Let’s be sincere please ».
PesaCheck contacted the page via private message but received no response.
We then contacted Abimbola who claimed that said page is impersonating him. The Minister added that a communiqué official of the secretary general of the ministry he supervises had been published for this purpose.
The ministry listed its platforms digital: Twitter: @tourismeBenin_Facebook: @tourismebj229Instagram: @ministeretourisme229Youtube: @ministeretourismebenin220LinkedIn: Ministry of Tourism Benin. The numbers 21 30 84 75 and 21 30 70 13 can be contacted for any information.
Abimbolaformer minister of the maritime economy in 2011 under President Thomas Boni Yayi, and also a former member of the 6th legislature, was appointed to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts by President Patrice Talon on September 6, 2019 and renewed in 2021 after the re-election of the Head of State.
The page is similar to previous hoaxes that PesaCheck has debunked, where people create pages posing as famous people and organizations and ask followers to message them for financial help.
PesaCheck reviewed a Facebook page posing as Benin’s Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Jean-Michel Abimbola claiming to offer financial assistance and found it to be a HOAX.
This post is part of an ongoing series of fact checks by PesaCheck, 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 organizations like PesaCheck help sort out fact from fiction. We do this by giving audiences deeper insight and context to the posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news on Facebook? Here’s how you can report it. Et here is more information on the PesaCheck methodology to check for questionable content.
This fact check was written by the fact-checker Arsene Assogba and edited by Josaphat Finogbe, article editor at PesaCheck. This article has been approved for publication by the editor at PesaCheck, Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is the first public finance fact-checking initiative in Africa. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru et Justin Arenstein and is incubated by the continent’s largest civic tech and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It aims to help the public separate fact from fiction in public statements about the numbers that shape our world, with particular emphasis on public finance statements that shape the government’s delivery of public services related to the goals of sustainable development (SDGs), such as health care, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reports. To learn more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through his fonds InnovateAFRICA, with support from the Deutsche Welle Academy, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organizations.
