|
?:reviewBody
|
-
Facebook posts have once again begun circulating asking people to spread awareness of the kidnap of a five-year-old girl named Anibe Alexandra Odoma in Houston, Texas, United States. These posts first began spreading in 2017. Anibe was indeed kidnapped in 2016 -- but she’s from the Nigerian capital Abuja, not Texas. The good news is that she was found shortly after her disappearance, and her father confirmed to AFP that today his daughter is fine and safe. The notice falsely locating Anibe in Texas has recently been doing the rounds in Kenya, including this version posted on Facebook on March 1, 2019. A screenshot taken March 7, 2019, showing a post which claims Anibe was kidnapped in Texas When Anibe was kidnapped from her home in Abuja’s Gwarimpa district in December 2016, her parents reported her missing to authorities and the news was also shared on Facebook, via a December 12 post that was shared around 1,200 times. Forunately, just a day later on December 13, friends of the family put word out on Facebook that she had been found and thanking everyone who had helped with the search. A screenshot taken on March 7, 2019, showing a post stating Anibe was found in December 2016 But in 2017, new posts started appearing on social media, calling for prayers for Anibe and stating that she had gone missing in Texas. The earliest post we could find locating her there was found on a US website called Not in My World , dedicated to fighting child abuse. The post, uploaded on May 7, 2017, claimed that someone rang the doorbell and Anibe answered the door and was taken. It called on Veterans, Active Service Members, Fathers, Brothers, Explorers, Boy Scouts, Hunters, Fishermen, Scuba Divers to work together with Law Enforcement and reunite this Dear Family. A few days later Cherokee Simpson also shared the same post to her contacts via her Google+ account, asking them to Please HELP! FORWARD TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. All it takes is a minute to care. We can find her with social media!!!. Her post was shared 109 times. Screenshot taken March 7, 2019, showing a Google post about missing Anibe -- after she's been found As you can see, it’s the same image that is currently doing the rounds in Kenya. It’s been shared on a range of social networks since 2017, including Instagram and Pinterest . Pleas for information about Anibe also continued to circulate in Nigeria months after she was found. The Twitter account Giditraffic, which provides Nigerian road traffic updates and other information, shared a post in February 2017 reporting that she had been kidnapped last night. Several Twitter users pointed out in replies to the post to Giditraffic, which currently has 1.63 million followers, that the information was out of date. Several months later, in September 2017, columnist Sonnie Ekwowusi wrote in the influential newspaper THISDAY that he got the message on WhatsApp and to this day, nobody, including her parents, could account for her whereabouts. As per the Facebook update on December 13, 2016 announcing that she was safe, this was not true. AFP was able to contact Anibe’s father, who identified himself simply as Mr. Odoma. Reached by telephone on March 7, 2019, he confirmed that his daughter is now fine and safe. This happened since 2016, but you know this social media thing keeps going. I don’t know what people are talking about now, I have not come across it recently, he said. Beware of messages labelled ‘forwarded as received’ You’ll notice that the text on the posts falsely locating Anibe in Texas include the words forwarded as received. This is one of the fastest ways in which misinformation spreads in Nigeria, among other places. By adding these words, the sender is trying to say: I didn’t write this, I’m just passing on a message. I don’t have any responsibility for this information. Before you share any message marked Forwarded as received, ask yourself the following questions: 1. What is the original source of this information? 2. What is the interest of the sender? 3. Can it be confirmed by credible media? 4. How long has this information been in circulation? 5. Is there an update anywhere? An online search for key words in the post is a good place to start. In the case of little Anibe, a simple search for Anibe Alexandra Odoma quickly reveals that fact-checking website Snopes had ruled out any link to Houston back when the posts first started spreading in 2017.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}