On Friday, after FIJ released its investigation into the ponzi-like operations of Landwey, a real estate investment company owned by Olawale Ayilara, droves of micro-influencers clamped down on its social media handles and that of its of founder in an attempt to discredit the report.

Armed with one tool, the most recent copy of Landwey’s repetitive press release, they specfically doxxed the Twitter handles of FIJ and its founder, masquerading said press release as disproof of the allegations against Landwey, and sensationally claiming that the report was motivated by personal vendetta.

READ ALSO:‘Landwey, Money Heist’: A Real Estate Company With Access To Power Is Getting Away With Daylight Ponzi

In no time, they buried the report with copy-and-paste positive reviews and briefly appeared on Nigeria’s trend table with the hashtag #Landwey.

But FIJ’s review of some of the influencer accounts showed they either had ties to Ayilara, had little to no social media presence prior to their posts defending Landwey, or were advertorial machines churning out retweets of questionable money-making schemes, controversy, and in some instances, sexually explicit content.

FAIRY GBEMIE, THE ‘BLUE FILM’ MARKETER

Fairy Gbemie, one of the influencers, who also doubled as an ambassador of Oraimo, implied that FIJ had a personal issue with Ayilara, commenting: “Do you have a personal matter with Wale? coz see Landwey press release [sic].”

Based on her remarks, one may assume she was interested in and shared trends in the real estate market or Landwey’s development plans, but this was not the case.

Gbemie has only tweeted about real estate four times, and each time it was to refute FIJ’s report on Ayilara’s questionable practises.

In three months, she shifted from posing as a neutral spectatort to promoting and defending Landwey.

But it was her job, after all: to promote and advertise products and services and, when required, whitewash their misconduct to mislead the public.

Gbemie never provided any counter-evidence to FIJ’s investigation. Instead, she attempted to drown out the story by charging her followers to leave favourable reviews on her two #Landwey posts.

READ ALSO: To Hide FIJ’s ‘Landwey, Money Heist Story’, Paid Social Media Influencers Trend #Landwey

All the ensuing responses were monotonous and unoriginal, like programmed bots instructed to comment, “this is amazing” or “this is super amazing”.

Gbemie’s Twitter page is dotted with retweets of promotional adverts, some of which are about sexual content.

With over 78k followers and active telegram and WhatsApp communities, she receives a decent engagement.

ONE NATHANIEL, TWO TWITTER HANDLES

Unlike Gbemie, Nathaniel Taiwo, appeared to be conversant with the real estate industry and Ayilara.

A realtor himself, Taiwo claimed FIJ’s investigation was without proof and that because he lived in one of Landwey’s estates, the accounts of several other clients were false.

It didn’t take long for Taiwo to give himself away. Prior to his engagement with FIJ about Landwey, he was last active on Twitter on February 12, 2022.

A peek at his LinkedIn page revealed that he attended Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED) at the same time as Ayilara. This explains his defending of Ayilara after one Twitter user, @rawlingsimpact, accused Ayilara of involvement in a corruption scandal in TASUED.

“Hi @rawlinsimpact can you mention one corruption scandal Wale was enmeshed in back in TASUED?

“Also kindly give verifiable prove to your claim.

“If you are not being used to destroy the reputation of this hardworking Nigerian, then do this,” he had responded.

Taiwo not only used his official Twitter account to make disparaging comments, he also used a proxy account @nath_ware.

READ ALSO: How Olawale Ayilara’s Landwey Falsified Information to Get FIJ’s Website Suspended

THE ‘ORACLE THE MESSIAH’

If FIJ doesn’t write about real estate, he himself never does. Before FIJ’s ‘Landwey, Money Heist’ report, the only other time Jonathan Elshaddai, known on Twitter as Oracle The Messiah, shared anything about Landwey or real estate was in March, in response to FIJ’s founder’s pre-action notice against Ayilara.

“Are you sure this is not a personal vendetta?” He had tweeted back then. And like textbook, fellow influencers Fairy Gbemie and @_adjola made similar comments in support of Ayilara at the time, as they have done since the release of FIJ’s investigation.

Although a UX designer, Elshaddai primarily operates as an influencer on Twitter. His page is riddled with promotional content. including explicit sexual content.

It was a similar trend with all the influencers.

OLA AND THE PR ‘ALL-STARS’

Ola (with the twitter handle @datgitlAdeola) and Ola (with Twitter handle @_adjola) had similar digital footprints to Elshaddai and Gbemi.

They were public relations machines from the same online community. Their timelines were nearly identical — the same way their posts about Landwey were — saturated with promotions and adverts.

They share each other’s content and have the same community of people engaging in their content. TioTequila quotes Elshaddai’s tweets, Ola (@datgirlAdeola) retweets TioTequila’s post and quotes Elshaddai’s tweets; Ola (@datgirlAdeola) retweets Ola (@_adjola)’s post; and Ann retweets Busayomi’s post, who then quotes Elshaddai.

They are representative of an online machine, fuelling propaganda in exchange for money.