Facebook is Still Running Deepfake Scam Ads Using Nigeria’s Biggest Names – MoreBranches

Scammers are still paying Facebook to show Nigerians deepfake videos of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Peter Obi, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other public figures pitching fake investment schemes, according to a Premium Times investigation published on 8 October. Some of the ads stayed up for months, even though Meta’s own rules ban them.
Meta confirmed to Premium Times that the ads and videos broke its policy. They were taken down in the first week of July, after the newspaper asked the company about them. The tech giant says it removes ads like these when it detects them and is investing in review teams and detection tools.
In mid-April, a sponsored video on a Facebook page called Nigeria Daily Report showed an AI-made version of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who represents Kogi Central, pitching a “lucrative” scheme. It promised ₦14 million a month on a one-off ₦430,000 stake, a return of more than 3,000 per cent a month. The senator never made the video. She had already publicly denied endorsing any investment platform after a similar fake a month earlier.
A May video on a page called Nigeria Daily Bulletin used a fake Peter Obi, whom Premium Times identifies as the National Democratic Congress presidential candidate. It asked viewers to put in ₦350,000 to get ₦4.5 million. The link in that video led to a lookalike of Channels Television’s website, carrying a made-up interview between Obi and Channels presenter Seun Okinbaloye about a scheme called AfriQuantumX. A form on the page collected names, emails and phone numbers. The site’s registration details were hidden behind a domain privacy service.
The same tactic has hit some of the country’s best-known names, according to the report and the fact-checks it links to.
A fake video of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO Director-General promised ₦2.66 million a day from a ₦380,000 stake. She warned on X that she never posts on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, so anything there carrying her image is not from her.
Tony Elumelu, UBA chairman has also been affected. He said the fake of him “looked and sounded remarkably real, but it was completely fake.”
Jim Ovia, Zenith Bank group chairman, and Aliko Dangote have also appeared in fake investment promos. Journalists Seun Okinbaloye of Channels TV and Kadaria Ahmed of RadioNow have been faked too.
Facebook first said it would remove deepfake videos in 2020. Six years later they are everywhere, and critics argue Meta is slow to act because the ads make it money. Reuters reported last year that internal documents showed Meta projected about $16 billion, roughly 10 per cent of its 2024 revenue, from ads for scams and banned goods. The same documents showed it sometimes charged suspected scammers higher ad rates instead of refusing their ads.
Meta says it removed more than 159 million scam ads on Facebook last year and took down 10.9 million accounts tied to criminal scam centres. It also says it now uses AI to catch celebrity-bait scams. Fact-checkers describe a different picture on the ground.
Nurudeen Akewushola of FactCheckHub told Premium Times that scammers hide a post from a page’s public profile, but it still reaches the audience it targets as a sponsored ad. Anyone who clicks one is likely to be shown more, because of how Meta personalises ads. The pages behind the videos often look dormant, with a handful of posts. One of them showed no ad history in Meta’s Ad Library, the tool meant to show who ran an ad and for how long. Akewushola said the volume is now too high for fact-checkers to cover everything.
The same playbook is already being used around the Dangote refinery IPO. The SEC has warned about fake websites, WhatsApp messages and social media ads promising shares, so read about the IPO before you apply.
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