# The Business of Lies: Inside Nigeria’s Profitable Disinformation Economy
## When Death Becomes a Clickbait Business
In the chaotic, attention-hungry world of Nigerian social media, a peculiar and disturbing trend has emerged—one where death announcements are manufactured for profit rather than reported as fact. The most jarring example came when rumors swept across X (formerly Twitter) claiming that Deja Kosoko, the six-year-old daughter of popular musician Adekunle Gold, had died from a rare genetic condition. The post included what appeared to be a screenshot of an announcement from the singer himself, lending it an air of authenticity that fooled thousands. Within hours, the post had amassed millions of views and hundreds of comments from shocked and grieving Nigerians who had no reason to doubt what they were seeing. Except it was all completely fabricated—a carefully crafted lie designed to exploit genuine human emotion for engagement.
The pattern repeats with sickening regularity. Veteran Nollywood actor Pete Edochie found himself the subject of a similar hoax when another account announced his death, claiming his eldest son had confirmed the tragic news on Instagram. The post spread like wildfire, generating 1.4 million views, 8,000 likes, and 1,500 reposts before anyone thought to verify the story. As the actor’s family and fans scrambled to determine the truth, the account that started the rumor—one with barely 10,000 followers—had already achieved what every social media content creator dreams of: massive reach, enormous engagement, and the kind of metrics that translate directly into money. These pages often target prominent figures deliberately, understanding that celebrity deaths trigger the strongest emotional responses and therefore generate the most clicks, shares, and ultimately, advertising revenue.
## The Financial Engine Behind Fake News
What makes this phenomenon particularly disturbing is not just the callous disregard for truth and human feeling, but the sophisticated understanding of social media economics that drives it. BusinessDay’s investigation into these accounts revealed that they are not operated by casual mischief-makers but by savvy digital entrepreneurs who have cracked the code of viral content. The strategy is simple but effective: publish shocking, emotionally charged content about well-known figures, watch the engagement metrics explode, and then cash in through various monetization channels. Platform policies that reward engagement—whether through revenue-sharing programs, sponsored content, or affiliate marketing—create a perverse incentive structure where lies are more valuable than truth.
Take the economics of X’s Creator Revenue Sharing program as an example. When a post exceeds certain engagement thresholds, the account owner becomes eligible to earn a share of advertising revenue generated by that content. A single viral post like the Pete Edochie death hoax could generate hundreds of dollars in direct platform payouts—in this case, an estimated $500 or more by month’s end. But that’s just the beginning. Once an account accumulates a substantial following and demonstrates consistent engagement, it becomes attractive to brands looking for promotional partnerships. Sponsored posts can command thousands of dollars depending on audience size and engagement rates. Beyond that, many of these accounts redirect traffic to external platforms—monetized blogs, betting sites, or affiliate marketing pages—where additional revenue flows in. An account with moderate-but-consistent engagement can realistically generate between $1,000 and $5,000 monthly, which in Nigerian currency (₦1.3 to ₦6.7 million) represents an extremely comfortable income in a country where the average monthly salary is around ₦200,000.
## Anatomy of a Profitable Lie
The BusinessDay investigation identified a constellation of accounts engaged in this practice, including some with substantial reach. One Instagram account with over 525,000 followers was found to have circulated false claims about Nollywood actress Fola Tinubu and her supposed pregnancy with actor Aremu Afolayan, alongside fabricated suggestions about political figures. Another X account with 33,000 followers claimed that popular personalities Bam Bam and Teddy A had gotten divorced—a complete fabrication that nonetheless generated significant engagement before being debunked. What ties these accounts together is not just their willingness to lie, but their sophisticated understanding of what Makes content spread. They follow a predictable playbook: choose a recognizable name, craft a shocking but believable narrative, include a manufactured screenshot or quote for authenticity, and publish at peak usage times to maximize visibility.
The accounts also employ a tactic of strategic ambiguity that helps them evade accountability. Rather than definitively stating a falsehood, they might pose it as a question or present it as a rumor being investigated, allowing them to claim they were merely “sharing what they saw” if challenged. Some routinely delete debunked posts while keeping the engagement they’ve already harvested. Others maintain a mix of legitimate content—daily entertainment news, movie reviews, celebrity gossip that turns out to be true—interwoven with the fabricated stories. This blending of fact and fiction makes it harder for platforms and users to identify them as problematic accounts, allowing them to continue operating while their reputation for occasionally breaking news grows. The strategy works precisely because it exploits how most people consume information on social media: quickly, emotionally, and without extensive fact-checking.
## Regulatory Gaps and Enforcement Failures
One might expect that the Nigerian government would have developed effective mechanisms to counteract this disinformation economy, especially given the country’s experiences with fake news during elections and crises. The legal framework appears robust on paper: the Cybercrimes Act of 2015 criminalizes various forms of online misinformation, and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) established a Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms and Internet Intermediaries in 2022, which ostensibly requires social media companies to police content more aggressively. Platforms themselves have policies against misleading content and coordinated inauthentic behavior. The problem lies not in the existence of these regulations but in their application.
The regulatory bodies responsible for oversight are severely under-resourced and ill-equipped to monitor the volume of content flowing through social media platforms. They lack the technical capacity to track anonymous accounts or identify coordinated networks in real-time. Enforcement is sporadic at best, with the resources that do exist being deployed against journalists and political dissidents rather than against financially motivated misinformation peddlers. As one NCC official admitted, the regulatory structures were designed for a different media era—one where publishers were identifiable entities and content moved slowly enough for verification. Today’s environment, where anonymous creators can reach millions within minutes, has outpaced the capacity of these legacy institutions. This leaves a gap between what the law promises and how it operates, a gap that disinformation entrepreneurs exploit freely and profitably.
## The Pressure on Victims and the Cost on Society
The human cost of these profitable lies extends far beyond the inconvenience of a brief moment in the spotlight. For the celebrities targeted, the consequences can be severe and long-lasting. A death hoax forces the subject to spend precious time and energy responding to concerned friends, family members, and fans, often while dealing with the emotional shock of reading about one’s own demise. The reputational damage extends beyond the individual to their families, who must field calls and messages from across the globe. Even after the rumor is debunked, a residue of doubt remains; in an environment where so many falsehoods circulate, some people never fully see the correction. Professional relationships can suffer as brand partners, concerned about association with controversy, pull back from collaborations.
For society as a whole, the disinformation economy has a corrosive effect. It erodes public trust not just in social media but in all information sources. When people cannot distinguish between authentic news and manufactured falsehoods, they become more cynical and less engaged with legitimate information. The constant stream of false death announcements, fabricated scandals, and manufactured outrage contributes to a general sense of information fatigue, where people increasingly tune out even genuine news. More dangerously, the success of financial disinformation creates a template that can be adapted for other purposes. The same techniques used to sell fake celebrity deaths can be and have been deployed to spread political misinformation, manipulate public opinion on health issues, or incite ethnic and religious tensions. What begins as a profit-seeking scheme can become a threat to social cohesion and democratic processes.
## Reforming the System: Solutions and Expert Perspectives
Experts who spoke with BusinessDay were unanimous in their assessment that addressing Nigeria’s disinformation problem requires more than simply publishing more fact-checks or deleting obviously false posts. Igbagboyemi Oladele, a cybersecurity expert and social media strategist, frames the issue in economic terms, arguing that the only effective way to fight the disinformation business is to dismantle its business model. This means pressure on platforms to make revenue-sharing programs less vulnerable to abuse, requiring greater transparency in sponsored content, and implementing algorithms that de-prioritize content flagged for misinformation. It also means making the financial networks behind these accounts more visible and accountable—if it becomes riskier and less profitable to spread lies, fewer people will do it.
Lanre Olagunju, editor-in-chief of CheckClimate Africa, emphasizes the importance of pattern recognition and multi-layered responses. Rather than focusing on individual false posts, regulators should look for coordinated patterns of behavior—accounts that post simultaneously, share the same content with slight variations, or amplify each other’s messages. Counteracting these networks requires combining content-based solutions (labels, fact-checks, warnings) with structural ones (algorithm adjustments, monetization penalties) and educational ones (media literacy programs that teach users to question and verify before sharing). The response must be nuanced; heavy-handed censorship risks legitimizing the very disinformation ecosystem by turning state actors into another source of information manipulation. As Olagunju notes, overreach can erode trust just as quickly as disinformation itself, making it essential that interventions preserve freedom of expression while curbing abuse.
BusinessDay reached out to major platforms and regulators for their response to these findings—X, Meta, and NITDA were all contacted on June 30, 2026, with a deadline of July 10, 2026, to respond. As of the writing of this report, none had responded. This silence itself tells the story. The dramatic acceleration of artificial intelligence content creation, deep-fake technology, and sophisticated bot networks suggests the problem will likely worsen before solutions emerge. But there is also hope: increased awareness, persistent independent journalism, growing platform accountability, and public pressure for reform can all contribute to turning this situation around. Nigerian society has confronted and adapted to many challenges throughout its history, and the disinformation economy—for all its damage and deception—is not beyond fixing. The first step is acknowledging that behind every fake screenshot and false death announcement lies a real business opportunity, a real financial incentive, and a systemic failure that technology alone cannot solve.