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Military Officers

30.01.2025 Featured ALERT: Fake Navy, Air Force ‘Official Accounts’ Misleading Thousands on TikTok

Published 30th Jan, 2025

By Timileyin Akinmoyeje

Multiple TikTok accounts are impersonating the Nigerian Navy and Air Force, misleading Nigerians and potentially setting up recruitment scams.

FIJ found that pages like the NigerianNavyHQ and HQNigerianAirforce posed as official military accounts, but neither the Navy nor the Air Force has an official presence on TikTok.

The NigerianNavyHQ, the largest account impersonating the navy, has more than 36,000 followers and 96,000 likes from TikTok users.

Similarly, the HQNigerianAirforce, the largest account impersonating the Nigeria Air Force, had over 3000 followers at the time of this report. The account claims in its bio to be ‘the official account of the Nigerian Air Force’.

On Thursday, FIJ confirmed that the NAF had only four verified social media accounts — on Facebook, Instagram and X — none of which included TikTok.

Similarly, Aiwuyor Adams-Aliu, the spokesperson of the Nigerian Navy, confirmed to FIJ that none of the pages claiming to be the Nigerian Navy belonged to the Navy.

READ ALSO: ALERT: Ongoing Civil Service Recruitment Linked to Mohammed Abubakar Sani Fraudulent

“No, please. That is FAKE. The Nigerian Navy does not have a TikTok. Kindly help report same as fake and use your wide network to notify the general public that it is fake,” Aliu told FIJ in a phone conversation.

Other TikTok accounts claiming to be associated with the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Army include naf.cadet, nigeria.air.force, nigerianairforce and nigeriannavyrecruitment.

Easily Verifiable—But the Navy Has No Website

Ordinarily, confirming the authenticity of military pages should be easy. A simple check on official websites would clear any doubts.

However, at press time, the Nigerian Navy’s website was not functional. FIJ’s attempts to visit www.navy.mil.ng returned an error, leaving no official point of verification on the website.

FIJ also found questionable websites claiming to belong to the Navy. One such portal, navye-recruitment.org, is a red flag under Nigeria’s official web domain regulations which mandate that all government websites use “.gov.ng” or “.mil.ng” for legitimacy.

The unavailability of the Nigerian Navy website similarly violates the stipulations of the NITDA that mandates government owned web pages to be “accessible to the public in a fast and secure manner on a 24-hour basis and on all days of the week”.

READ ALSO: ALERT: Fake CBN Recruitment Portal Collecting Job Seekers’ Data

What Does This Cause?

With no proliferation of fake social media pages, fraudulent recruitment schemes have an open field.

On Tuesday, the Nigerian Army warned against fake military recruitment, stating that it did not have an official TikTok account and that anyone requesting funds for recruitment was a fraudster. The Army, too, had been impersonated on TikTok.

The operators behind these fake accounts could face serious charges, including fraud under Section 419 of the Criminal Code Act for using false identities to deceive the public.

They could also face online impersonation charges under Section 22 of the Cybercrimes Act, 2015, which carries a sentence of up to three years in prison or a N10 million fine. It could also violate the Terrorism Prevention Act (2011) if misleading military information is shared on such accounts.

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Published 30th Jan, 2025

By Timileyin Akinmoyeje

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