General News
2023 Elections: How Meta is Working to Promote Election Integrity in Nigeria
Meta on Wednesday revealed the steps it is taking to protect the integrity of the Nigeria elections taking place in 2023. This includes its efforts to combat the spread of misinformation and to make political advertising more transparent.
L-R: Ebuka Ogbodo, Public Policy Manager, Anglophone West Africa, Meta; Oluwasola Obagbemi, Corporate Communications Manager, Anglophone West Africa, Meta and Adaora Ikenze, Head of Public Policy, Anglophone West Africa, Meta during a media roundtable focused on how Meta is preparing for Nigeria’s 2023 elections, which held in Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday December 7, 2022.
This work will continue in the lead up to, during, and after voting and builds on Meta’s experience and learnings from supporting elections across Sub-Saharan Africa and globally.
Meta’s approach has also been informed by conversations with human rights groups, NGOs, local civil society organisations, regional experts and local election authorities – to help ensure the safety of people using Meta’s family of apps, customise election strategies for Nigeria, maintain the integrity of its platforms and keep users safe.
Commenting at the event, Meta’s Head of Public Policy for Anglophone West Africa, Adaora Ikenze said, “We know we have an important responsibility when it comes to helping keep people safe during the elections.
“Using lessons from the past including input from experts and policymakers across the national spectrum, we’ve made substantial investments in people and technology to reduce misinformation, remove harmful content on our platforms, fight voter interference and promote civic engagement during the elections.
“We continue to work closely with election authorities and local partners in Nigeria to ensure we’re preparing for the specific challenges in Nigeria and taking appropriate steps to stay ahead of emerging threats.”
Some of the steps we are taking to prepare for the Nigerian elections include:
● A dedicated cross functional team spread across the world as well as locally focused on the Nigerian elections. This includes a number of people from Nigeria and people who have spent significant amounts of time in the country, as we recognise that local understanding is critical. The team also includes individuals with global expertise in misinformation, hate speech, elections and disinformation. These teams are working hard to prevent any abuse of our services before, during and after Nigeria’s 2023 general elections. Locally, we also have staff who reside in Nigeria and work in the public policy, & public policy programmes and communications.
● Keeping people safe: Since 2016 we have quadrupled the size of the global teams working on safety and security to about 40,000 people, and have invested more than $16 billion in teams and technology in this area. This also includes over 15,000 content reviewers, who are located across the globe, in every major timezone. Collectively, these reviewers are able to review content in more than 70 languages- including Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.
● Outlining our Community Standards that publicly explain what is and isn’t allowed on our platforms to prioritise integrity on our platforms during and after elections.
● Addressing virality: On WhatsApp bulk or automated messaging is a violation of our terms of service. If we find instances of people misusing the service we remove those accounts. We continue to constrain forwarding and earlier in 2022 we announced that any message that has been forwarded once, will now only be able to be forwarded to one group at a time, rather than five, which was the previous limit. When we introduced the same feature for highly forwarded messages, it reduced the number of these messages sent on WhatsApp by over 70%. We also label ‘forwarded’ and ‘highly forwarded’ messages to highlight when something has been shared multiple times. We’ve introduced forward limits to Messenger too, so messages can only be forwarded to five people or groups at a time.
● Taking aggressive steps to fight the spread of misinformation on our services in Nigeria, because we know it’s important for people to see accurate information on Facebook and Instagram. We’re removing misinformation which could lead to imminent violence or physical harm and working with our fact-checking partners in Nigeria – AFP, Africa Check and Dubawa – to review and rate potentially false content on our platforms, label it, and place it lower in our feed, so fewer people see it. To further educate Nigerians on how to spot false news and the actions to take, we’re partnering with local radio stations to create ‘#NoFalseNews’ radio dramas in English and Pidgin, executing a WhatsApp awareness campaign #YouSaid in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo and Pidgin to educate users to verify information before sharing and running online ads on Facebook and radio in Yoruba, Pidgin, Hausa and Igbo to educate people on how to spot false information.
● Made political ads more transparent in Nigeria: Anybody who wants to run political ads in Nigeria must go through a verification process to prove who they are and that they live in Nigeria. These ads are labelled with a disclaimer, so you can see who paid for them and stored them in our public Ads Library for seven years, so that everyone can see what ads are running, what types of people saw them and how much was spent. We also offer controls so that people in Nigeria can choose not to see any of these political ads which run with a disclaimer.
● Promoting civic engagement: Helping to build informed and civically engaged communities is central to our work around elections. Our dedicated teams have engaged in training and conversations with civil society organisations, academia, political parties and government to inform them of our election integrity efforts.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery is reportedly nearing completion of a $2.5 billion private placement that values the company at about $40 billion ahead of its planned public listing.
Private placement is the direct sale of company shares or bonds to pre-selected investors instead of the general public and it is used to raise money quickly while avoiding strict public reporting rules.
People familiar with the transaction said investors acquired as much as 6 per cent of the refinery, according to a BusinessDay report.
The reported terms would value the business at approximately $40 billion.
Neither Dangote Group nor the refinery has publicly announced the final amount raised, the identities of most subscribers or the precise percentage sold.
The figures should therefore be treated as transaction details supplied by unnamed sources rather than confirmed company disclosures.
The reported $2.5 billion total is nevertheless significant as it indicates strong demand for exposure to a privately controlled refinery that has rapidly become central to Nigeria’s fuel supply and an increasingly important exporter of petroleum products.
The placement was said to have attracted more demand than the available shares, allowing the company to secure substantially more than the amount initially associated with the fundraising exercise.
Femi Otedola, chairman, First HoldCo, is the only major participant publicly identified in the report.
He reportedly committed $100 million to the transaction and sold his investment in Geregu Power Plc to finance the acquisition.
Nigeria’s pension industry was also reportedly cleared to participate.
Access to more than $17 billion in retirement assets would broaden the refinery’s potential investor base beyond wealthy individuals and conventional institutional buyers.
Participation by Pension Fund Administrators would, however, require careful attention to valuation, liquidity and portfolio-concentration limits.
Retirement funds must balance the attraction of a large Nigerian industrial asset against their responsibility to protect contributors’ savings.
The implied $40 billion valuation represents investor expectations about the refinery’s future earnings rather than only the physical cost of constructing the facility.
Its ability to process 650,000 barrels of crude daily gives it a central role in supplying Nigeria and other markets, but its commercial performance remains connected to crude availability, product prices, exchange rates and regulation.
The refinery has struggled to obtain all the Nigerian crude it requires under the government’s naira-for-crude arrangement.
It has consequently purchased some feedstock internationally and recently moved local petroleum-product pricing into dollars to align sales revenue more closely with its foreign-currency expenses.
Those constraints will be important during any public offering.
Prospective shareholders will want greater clarity on crude-supply contracts, debt, operating margins, export revenue and the company’s relationship with Nigerian regulators.
It is also unclear whether the private placement involved newly issued shares, a sale by existing owners or a combination of both.
That distinction determines whether the reported $2.5 billion becomes fresh capital for the refinery or proceeds received by selling shareholders.
The transaction could provide a useful price reference for the planned initial public offering.
Federal government will next month launch Nigeria’s first national organized crime strategy to strengthen the country’s response to terrorism, cybercrime, human and drug trafficking, kidnapping, illicit financial flows, and other forms of organized crime.
Major General Adamu Laka, national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre under the Office of the National Security Adviser, disclosed this in Abuja during the validation of the strategy document.
He said the strategy provides a coordinated national framework for tackling organized crime through improved intelligence sharing, stronger collaboration among security agencies, and closer cooperation with the criminal justice system, civil society organizations, and international partners.
Major General Laka explained that the document was developed through a partnership involving the Federal Government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Government, and other stakeholders.
Speaking at the event, Cheikh Toure, UNODC representative, said the strategy would strengthen Nigeria’s capacity to combat transnational crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime, human trafficking, kidnapping, and illicit financial flows.
Also speaking, Douglas Grane, acting director of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reaffirmed the U.S. government’s support for Nigeria’s efforts to tackle organized crime through stronger inter-agency and international cooperation.
Representatives of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, and the National Cyber Security Centre also endorsed the initiative, describing it as a major step towards improving Nigeria’s fight against organized crime.
FATE Foundation, with funding from the Citi Foundation, has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme to equip young people in Nigeria with financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills.
Delivered through free, safe, and accessible platforms, the programme supports the incubation and scaling of youth-led enterprises, enabling income generation and job creation.
In October 2025, FATE Foundation was selected as a recipient of Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge to Accelerate Youth Employability. Joining the cohort of 50 organisations globally, the Foundation will receive $500,000 over two years to advance its youth employability initiative.
“We are excited to be selected for Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge,” said Ayomide Akindolie-Igwe, Executive Director of FATE Foundation.
“This support enables us to equip young entrepreneurs in Nigeria with the financial literacy and skills needed to build and scale sustainable businesses.”
The programme addresses youth employability by tackling Africa’s growing jobs crisis. By 2030, the African continent will be home to 40% of the world’s youth, and with one in three under 35 already unemployed, this initiative will support Nigerian youth with a two-phase approach. It begins with financial literacy training before progressing to entrepreneurship development, incubation support, and access to tools needed to build viable, job-creating businesses.
“Through this innovative initiative, FATE Foundation is supporting low-income Nigerian youth to develop essential financial and entrepreneurial skills using accessible platforms.
“This support is not just helping individuals to succeed; it is building a solid foundation for sustainable enterprises that will drive job creation and contribute significantly to our nation’s economic vitality. This initiative is empowering and investing in the future of Nigeria, one youth at a time,” said Nneka Enwereji, MD/CEO Citibank Nigeria Limited.
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