Copy of National Youth Empowerment Fund Hoax211 Check

Fact-Check: Has the South Sudan Government Announced Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination?

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On Wednesday 13th October 2021, a press release by the office of The Vice President for Service Cluster and Chairman of the National Taskforce on COVID-19, Hussein Abdelbagi Akol, announced that Public and Private Institutions will now have to undergo Mandatory COVID-19 Test and Vaccination.

By David Uku

Several media reports published in the last few days state that the South Sudan government has announced a new mandatory COVID-19 Test and Vaccination for all private and public institutions in the country, 211 Check was contacted to verify.

Findings: 

On Wednesday 13th October 2021, a press release by the office of The Vice President for Service Cluster who also doubles as the Chairman of the National Taskforce on COVID-19, Hussein Abdelbagi Akol, announced that Public and Private Institutions will now have to undergo Mandatory COVID-19 Test and Vaccination.

“We will carry out mass testing, Vaccination programs, Rapid Diagnostic Tests,  in all the public and private institutions. This is to caution all the institutions because in the next few months, travelling outside might require mandatory COVID-19 vaccine certificates and it can help to gauge the level of infections in the country and adhere to the Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs),” partly reads the announcement.

John Pasquale Rumunu, the Health Ministry’s Director-General for Preventive Health Services and Acting COVID-19 Incident Manager said on Sunday they are set to roll out mass testing using the rapid diagnostic test to gauge the level of infection in the country for both public officials and the private sector in a bid to contain coronavirus. 

‘“The taskforce resolved to carry out mass vaccination program in all the public and private institutions, this is to caution all the institutions to know that in the next few months to come travelling outside might require mandatory COVID-19 vaccine certificates” he told Journalists in Juba on Sunday during the regular media briefing on COVID-19. 

Sacha Bootsman, World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Incident manager in South Sudan disclosed that so far only 0.3 per cent of South Sudan’s 12.2 million population is vaccinated. According to her, they have administered 120,412 vaccine doses to 35,755 people out of 2.4 million targets they had set in April this year when vaccination commenced.

South Sudan has vaccinated 22,103 of its health workers with only 2,782 receiving the Johnson and Johnson jabs since October 8 when the vaccination campaign was launched.

The United States donated 152,950 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine to South Sudan in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic on 14th September 2021, it is the vaccine currently being used the country following the completion of the COVID-19 AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility. It should be noted that South Sudan has not bought a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

COVID-19 Cases:

South Sudan has a total of 12,223 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 11,726 recoveries and 130 deaths since April last year when the first case was registered in the country  

Conclusion:

It is TRUE that the Government has announced mass COVID-19 testing and vaccination. The announcement has been made by both the National Taskforce on COVID-19 and the Ministry of Health. 

National Youth Empowerment Fund Hoax211 Check

Fact-Check: Is the Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme Legitimate?

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The Federal Republic of Nigeria has an initiative named Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Support (P-YES) and the application dates for 2021 have not yet been announced. Their official site is hosted at www.p-yes.gov.ng 

By: Oriba Douglas 

A widely shared WhatsApp message claims that the National Youth Empowerment Fund, a federal government agency in the Federal Republic of Nigeria is giving out ₦150,000 – ₦550,000 grants to citizens under the age of 13-65 years from 2021 – 2024 (it fails to specify which country). It calls for this to be achieved through interested persons applying and registering through their given website hosted at https://youth-empowerments.ethut.co 

Message Extract in full:

The message reads;

“*National Youth Empowerment Fund Application Form 2021 Is Out*

National Youth Empowerment Funding Application Form 2021 online for registration exercise which is the quickest to apply for is now out for all bonafide citizens only who needs helping hands in their various Business and Education

*The National Youth Empowerment Funds is vision into giving out ₦150,000 – ₦550,000 grant to every Citizen under the age 13-65 years from 2021-2024*.

Age 13-25 (150,000-300,000)

Age 25-65(400,000-700,000)

*October Payments has began for all applicants, Register To be Part of the Beneficiaries

*Strictly for Students and Business owners*

Check Eligibility and Apply here

WhatsApp Message of the Scam

Investigation:

211 Check followed the link attached to the WhatsApp message. It leads to a site on the internet with the URL https://youth-empowerments.ethut.co. The page presents the visitor with a bold header relaying the message Presidential Youth Empowerment Fund and is flaunted on the left by a logo that is used by the official P-YES, on the right a coat of arms of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and below are the Flags of Uganda, Ghana, Cameroun, Namibia plus the Coat of arms of the Republic of Kenya. 

The page further seeks to whey the visitors through a site marquee that stresses “The Presidential Youth Empowerment Funds for all citizens…”

A timer is also included on the website to state till when the offer will remain available.

The page then flows on to a simple HTML form.

The form starts off with some brief statements about the scheme. The form has spaces for full name, Country, Home Address, Phone Number, and Email Address before being presented with a button labelled “proceed” that once clicked ushers page 2 of the form presents Congratulatory messages stating that application has been received and to acquire the funds immediately one is asked to answer three questions that are on a carousel. Once all three questions are answered. A new page loads bearing messages like “after receiving and checking your application, you have been approved to receive the Presidential Youth Empowerment Funds for Free.

A precondition to receive the funds is then added stating that the money will be available immediately a button labelled “invite friends/groups” is clicked so as to share a replica of the same message at the very base of this fact check report to other WhatsApp users and groups. The precondition further dictates that the sharing be done till a blue bar on the site is full.

Analysis and Findings:

Red Flag 1: The first website’s first landing page displays flags and coats of arm of different African Countries in a manner lacking any officiality.

Red Flag 2: Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme is not registered as a valid  youth empowerment scheme anywhere in Africa but on the contrary Nigeria recently launched Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Support (P-YES) whose official logo exists on the fake site’s landing page.

Red Flag 3: The currency to be given out is Nigerian Naira, unsuitable for transactions among countries with different currencies and economies

Red Flag 4: The site borrows heavily the names, flags and logos from Official Nigerian establishments.

Red Flag 5: Without filling the form, #211Check was able to go to page 2 where the following questions were asked:

1. What is your employment Status?

2. What is your Marital status?

3. Choose age range?”

Red Flag 6: A false comments section accompanying page 2 bearing forged Facebook comments with alleged beneficiaries writing good reviews about the grant scheme. 

Red Flag 7: After answering the 3 questions on page 2, you are immediately notified that your application was successful.

Red Flag 8: You are required to mass resend a version of the WhatsApp message that likely brought you to the site in the first place, in order to receive your cash grant.

Analysis:

Analysing the Presidential Youth Empowerment Scheme website using the tool hosted at https://whois.domaintools.com showed that the website was registered and hosted on 13th July 2021

The domain was registered in the US and the current IP location is New Jersey, US.

The IP history shows that within the last 97 days the IP address has been changed four times.

A look at the source code to the website indicates the form on the site has no capabilities to submit any data entered into it and thus just there to create an environment that mimics the real thing. Developer tools on Microsoft Edge were used to analyse this.

Conclusion:

False, the website is fraudulent and its whole purpose is spam, mostly spamming WhatsApp platforms. 

The Federal Republic of Nigeria has an initiative named Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Support (P-YES) and the application dates for 2021 have not yet been announced. Their official site is hosted at www.p-yes.gov.ng 

SEC-2020-Results-Flourish211 Check

DATA STORY: 870 fail 2020/21 Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations in South Sudan

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By 211 Check Editorial Team

Only 870 candidates out of 33,255 failed the 2020/21 Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations. The results were announced last Friday by Awut Deng Acuil, the Minister of General Education and Instruction who also serves as the chair of the National Examinations Council.
The examination had the highest number of candidates since the country’s independence in 2011. According to the National Examinations Council, 32,385 of the 33,255 candidates who took the exams passed, representing 97.4 percent.

There were 21,917 male candidates, 21,331 of whom passed, 11,338 female candidates, and 11,054 passed.

Eastern Equatoria State had the highest performance index of 79.96 percent, while Upper Nile had the lowest at 67.91 percent.

Christian Religious Education performed best, with a mean score of 91.1 percent and a performance index of 89.3 percent, while French Language and Computer Science performed poorly, with 0.1 percent performance indexes.

Results Visualization
SEC-2020-Results-Flourish
Chart Showing the Number of Candidates from 2015 – 2020
Chart Showing the Number of Candidates for the CSE 2020/21 per Gender
Chart Showing Students in Academics, Commercial and Technical Section Per Gender
Performance Index by State