Some X accounts may have started organising a coordinated social media campaign to burnish the image of Betta Edu, the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and get her back in government.

President Bola Tinubu approved the suspension of Edu on January 8 following a leaked memo showing that she approved the transfer of over N585 million into the personal account of Oniyelu Bridget Mojisola.

Her suspension has opened up a trail of controversial transactions since her appointment in August 2023. The president’s decision delighted many Nigerians who had lost confidence in the implementation of social intervention programmes by the ministry.

READ ALSO: JUST IN: President Tinubu Suspends Betta Edu Amid N585m Scandal

In a surprising turn of events, however, some of the tweeps who once welcomed Edu’s suspension have started backtracking and carrying out what looks like a coordinated social media influence operation on behalf of the minister.

FIJ has identified some of them and their reactions to Edu’s suspension, as well as their self-styled promotion of the minister. The motivation for influencers is usually money, jobs or the promise of appointments. While FIJ could not establish the motive behind the Edu campaign, our analysis shows a pattern of coordination.

REACTIONS TO EDU’S SUSPENSION

@SodiqTade, an account suspected to be favourably disposed to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), expressed their happiness at the news of the Cross Rivers State-born minister’s suspension on January 8.

“I’m happy to read that Tinubu has suspended Betta Edu. It is good for accountability. I must say that I’m actually surprised tbh. Corruption has always been a requirement in making it big in APC, but it seems this particular corruption shocked Tinubu. Must be the time range,” @SodiqTade stated.

The same account had tweeted in October 2023 about their lack of confidence in Tinubu’s government: “If you think Tinubu administration is going to achieve anything with the likes of Betta Edu, then you are not serious.”

@KawuGarba also posted on January 8 calling for the minister’s suspension the same way some other government officials were recently suspended in order to allow for an investigation. “The former CBN governor was suspended before he was investigated; the same with EFCC and others,” he said. Who are those shielding Betta Edu? Why does Tinubu want to suspend her?”

This tweet was accompanied by hashtags #BettaEduIsTheRealCulprit and #BettaEdumustbeprobed. In some tweets on January 7, the account posted: “Tinubu is biased for suspending Halima Shehu and keeping Betta Edu while the investigation is going on.

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“Tinubu should suspend Betta Edu first before directing the investigation. In the same way former minister Sadiya Farouk was detained by EFCC today, Betta Edu should also be detained with her make-up. Nobody should give her water to clean it up.

@Abba_SZN wrote: “Now the PBAT suspended the corrupt Betta Edu, EFCC should arrest her and make her pay for the Npower backlogs she hijacked. Now we believe that PBAT is serious about his fight against corruption.”

Other tweets by @Abba_SZN were: “Betta Edu will soon overtake Diezeni as the most corrupted Minister under the PBAT renewed hope administration. PBAT should also suspend her if at all he’s serious about fighting corruption in Nigeria,” “Dear PBAT, with these developments regarding Betta Edu, we shall see whether your government has tolerance for corruption or not. Halima Shehu got suspended for what she didn’t do, why is Betta Edu still in charge?” and “Betta Edu is still in charge even after the serious allegations labeled against her. PBAT was swift in suspending Halima Shehu while Edu Betta, who has suspicious academic records still has a job. @officialEFCC should invite her for interrogation Asap.”

COORDINATED CAMPAIGN

These identified accounts appeared to be spearheading the campaign with their moderately large followings. @SodiqTade has more than 74,600 followers, @KawuGarba has over 22,400 followers and @Abba_SZN boasts of over 16,100 followers.

On Tuesday, these accounts started posting messages suspected to be an influence operation to shape their followers’ perception of the minister and the allegation against her.

Different from their tweets in support of Edu’s suspension, @SodiqTade posted on Tuesday: “I sincerely think Betta Edu should be returned as Minister. The suspension is pointless now that we know that she got approval from Gbajabiamila and, in extension, presidency. It will be unfair to her to take fall for something that the presidency is actively involved.”

In their recent tweets, @KawuGarba claimed the minister did nothing wrong: “With the evidence showing Betta Edu got the approval of the N3 billion for national register verification, her suspension is unjust and should be reversed. She didn’t do anything wrong by doing what she got approval from the presidency for.”

READ ALSO: FLASHBACK: Last Year, Betta Edu Said CBN — Not Personal Account — Would Pay Poor Nigerians

The third account, @Abba_SZN, also posted a message to launder the minister’s image in an attempt to pin the responsibility for the attempted money diversion on the president: “With the new documents in circulation, I must say that Betta Edu was wrongly accused of something the President had full knowledge about. The N3B they were talking about was approved by PBAT, this shows that she followed all legal process of getting the funds.”

For clarity, the new document the tweets quoted was a letter that surfaced on social media in the past week showing that Tinubu approved N3 billion for the verification of the national social register.

SIGNS OF COORDINATION

In the wake of the memo leak, the reactions by these influence campaigners pushing for the minister’s sack or suspension appeared strongly inorganic.

All their tweets showed clear signs of systematic coordination. For instance, ‘Betta Edu’ appeared in most of their tweets in bold fonts. This looks like an arrangement that had already taken place somewhere before making its way to social media.

In their latest tweets, FIJ detected that these tweets appeared with two major hashtags: #BettaEduIsTheRealCulprit and #BettaEdumustbeprobed. An in-depth look at these tweets strongly indicated a one-way line of thought. These words also stood out in their tweets: approval, new and presidency.

In each post, they consistently mentioned ‘Betta Edu’. In cyber influence operations, the conceptual goal is to influence people’s minds, and this is achieved by consistently creating a single keyword and compromising the X algorithm in order to place the word on the X trends table.

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Aside from this, they all posted not too long after one another. @Abba_SZN and @KawuGarba posted a few minutes apart, between 4:39 pm and 5:01 pm, while @SodiqTade posted his message a few hours earlier at 12:17 pm. With this in mind and a variation in the way the tweets were crafted, FIJ’s analysis showed a coordinated behaviour identified with inorganic operations and social media amplifications.

They also frequently referenced the word ‘approval’ as if it were a new discovery, but it is not. In the leaked memo, Edu herself said that she got approval from the president. However, the approval was not in contention, but she was requesting that the approved funds be sent into a civil servant’s bank account.

Based on the analysis of the tweets, FIJ understands that the latest campaigns to launder the suspended minister’s image may be coordinated.