By Pascal Ibe
Claim
An X user, @uptownofLagos, has claimed that President Bola Tinubu appointed Reno Omokri and Femi Kayode as the new CBN governor and finance minister respectively.
Verdict
This claim is FALSE. Findings indicated that both Olayemi Cardoso and Wale Edun are still the CBN governor and finance minister respectively.
Full Text
President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday sacked five of his ministers months after growing calls for the Nigeria leader to rejig his cabinet.
He also re-assigned 10 ministers to new ministerial portfolios and appointed seven new ministers for Senate confirmation.
President Tinubu appointed 48 ministers in August 2023, three months after his inauguration. The Senate immediately screened and confirmed the ministers. One of the ministers, Betta Edu, was suspended in January while another, Simon Lalong, moved to the Senate.
In September, presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga said the President would reshuffle his cabinet but didn’t give a time to the reorganization.
Reacting to the sack of five and appointment of seven new ministers on Wednesday, an X user, @uptownofLagos, claimed that Reno Omokri, a former aide to the ex-president GoodLuck Jonathan, had been appointed the new Central of Nigeria governor.
The X user also claimed that Femi Kayode, a former minister of aviation was appointed the new Nigeria’s finance minister.
He shared a photo combination of Mr Omokri and Kayode and wrote, “BREAKING: Tinubu appoints FFK and @renoomokri ministers of Finance and CBN Governor respectively.
The post generated over 700k views and more than 200 according to X analytics.
Although the post looks like a deliberate attempt to mock the two people, a check on the comment section showed that many persons believed that this claim was true. So FACTWATCH decided to run a fact-check on it.
Verification
First, reputable news organizations on Wednesday reported that the President sacked Uju-Ken Ohanenye as Minister of Women’s Affairs, Lola Ade-John as Minister of Tourism, Tahir Mamman as Minister of Education, Abdullahi Gwarzo as Minister of State, Housing, and Urban Development; and Jamila Ibrahim as Minister of Youth Development.
Tinubu subsequently nominated Bianca Odumegu-Ojukwu as the Minister of State Foreign Affairs, while Nentawe Yilwatda as the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, officially bringing an end to the tenure of suspended Betta Edu.
Check publications that corroborate this here and here.
Also, there are no credible reports anywhere that confirm that Mr Omokri and Kayode were appointed CBN governor and finance minister, respectively.
The official website of the Federal Ministry of Finance shows that Mr Wale Edun is the current boss there.
Also, the website of the CBN confirmed that Mr Olayemi Cardoso is still the governor of Nigeria’s apex Bank.
Conclusion
The X user deliberately made the post to mock the two people and to misinform the public.
The post FactCheck: Social media user deliberately made FALSE claim about new appointments of Reno Omokri, Femi Kayode appeared first on FactWatch.
FactWatch
