There are numerous claims circulating on social media that suggest billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote, is the ‘Owner of Nigeria’, as a result of his Wikipedia profile being suggested by the Google search algorithm whenever ‘Who is the owner of Nigeria’ is searched.
It appears that for some time now, Google’s search algorithm has been consistently promoting information that is either inaccurate or, when there is no relevant article, it displays a random profile from Wikipedia.
Still, on Thursday, some Nigerian social media users searched for “The owner of Nigeria” on Google and the search engine displayed Aliko Dangote’s profile from Wikipedia as the result, which caused misinformation and propaganda to spread on Twitter.
Many individuals took to Twitter with screenshots of the Google search result, urging others to do the same in order to confirm it. This led to many people conducting the same search and sharing the results across various social media platforms, and as a result, many people came to believe that Aliko Dangote, the wealthiest man in Africa, owns the country of Nigeria, which has a population of over 220 million people.
Popular Nigerian comedian, Helen Paul, recently posted how a Google search showed that Dangote is the owner of Nigeria.