On Saturday evening, a claim made the rounds on X that the police had apprehended the man supposedly responsible for a service breakdown experienced by MTN Nigeria recently. MTN customers across Nigeria had noticed the cancellation of various amounts of airtime and internet data debts on November 11. The network service provider, however, said afterwards that it had not forgone the debts, explaining that the development was a result of a technical glitch in its system.

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“MTN Nigeria Communications Plc can confirm a system glitch impacting balance enquiries. Some customers may receive error messages showing their balances have been cleared. This is not the case and all balances will reflect accurate figures once the problem is resolved. Our engineers are currently working to ensure this,” the company said.

The telecom neither said a hacker was responsible for the downtime nor declare anyone wanted. @AkpraiseMedia, a news, entertainment and digital promotion blog on X, claimed in a post yesterday that the IT student who masterminded the situation had been arrested.

CLAIM: The IT student who allegedly cleared all MTN users’ debts has been arrested.

Alongside the textual claim, the account attached a picture of an handcuffed man sandwiched between a male police officer to the left and a female officer to the right.

A large number of accounts reacted to the post after it was relleased at 8:46 pm yesterday. Of particular interest is the influence the claim appears to have had on many of the commenters under the post.

More than one million accounts have viewed the post in addition to several thousands of likes, reposts, comments and bookmarks.

Some commenters opined that MTN should hire the alleged suspect because he seemed to be a great techie. Some called for his prosecution, while some stated that MTN’s supposed laxity helped him attack their system.

A few of the comments read as follows: “People saying MTN should hire the guy and others saying MTN knows how to clear the debts themselves.. BUT do MTN know how to stop people from hacking their system. If they do, this guy couldn’t have access to it. So they should get him inside and let him show them how to block the way he used. Getting him jailed will anger his colleagues more to hack again.”

“They can properly employ him and learn from him, but they will say he is a criminal.”

“The people that steals billions aren’t paraded this way but this young guy that his skills are highly coveted can be channel towards positive things.”

VERIFICATION: FIJ subjected the image to Google Reverse Image search to detect the correctness or otherwise of the claim.

Jeffery Okafor 23yrs, #UnitedKingdom #Murder fugitive that fled to #Nigeria arrested, extradition process concluded. pic.twitter.com/mWbvJJ1FCU

— Nigeria Police Force (@PoliceNG) November 5, 2014

Firstly, the man in the picture was one Jeffery Okafor, a Nigerian said to be 23 years at the time of his arrest.

The search result showed that the image was first seen on the internet on November 5, 2014. FIJ came across a post by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) made on the said date on X.

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Before his arrest by police detectives, Okafor had been declared wanted in the United Kingdom for the murder of one Carl Beatson Asiedu on August 1, 2009, in London. He ran back to Nigeria and kept a low profile, changing from one location to another within the country.

He was arrested on September 23, 2014, in Asaba, Delta State, and the police subsequently extradited him to the UK. On April 30, 2015, he was convicted for murder and jailed.

CONCLUSION: The claim is false.