It is no longer a rumour that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is behind the desperate attempts to portray Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as a liar in Ghana.
This is because a highly meticulous enquiry by the African Academy for Open-Source Investigations (AAOSI) has uncovered how NDC’s National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi and some unscrupulous agents connected to the main opposition party have been organising politically contrived tweets aimed at discrediting the Vice President.
The enquiry, which was part of the AAOSI’s efforts to combat misinformation and strengthen democracy in Africa, probed the origin of the labelling of Vice President Bawumia as a liar with “#Bawuliar” to drive fake trends on Twitter.
It also revealed that the negative labelling of Bawumia as a liar was a tool deliberately deployed by the NDC to cast a slur on the integrity of Vice President Bawumia and discredit him any time he spoke on the economy or delivered a major speech.
“During the investigation, we observed almost every comment the Vice President made about the economy was met with a spike in #Bawuliar tweets. This investigation looks into whether the trend of #Bawuliar an organic or an attempt orchestrated by political opponents to cast a slur on the credibility of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia,” the research findings pointed out.
AAOSI’s findings discovered it was a coordinated plan led by Sammy Gyamfi, through his Twitter handles named @sammygyamfi2017, which according to the report, has now metamorphosed to @SammyGyamfi.
Again, the research identified another user “@Annanperry” who described himself as an NDC activist as one of those frequently promoting the fake #Bawuliar tweets alongside multiple accounts linked to the opposition party.
The research also focused on other areas such as the top 10 accounts with the most original #Bawuliar tweets, the top 10 Twitter accounts that retweeted the #Bawuliar tweets, the top 10 amplifiers of the fake trend, the top 10 Twitter accounts whose tweets were retweeted the most as well as the origin and top players of the orchestrated hashtag “Bawuliar”.
“We identified Twitter user @sammygyamfi2017 as the second most influential account in respect to the #Bawuliar trend. @sammygyamfi2017 per our checks, used to be the username of the Twitter account of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi. Currently, the account’s username is @SammyGyamfi_.
“This is supported by the archived tweets on Wayback Machine, from when the account’s username used to be @sammygyamfi2017.
@SammyGyamfi_ has tweeted #Bawuliar 11 times. The top three #Bawuliar tweets were by @SammyGyamfi_.
“The most popular #Bawuliar tweet was @SammyGyamfi’s reaction to Dr. Bawumia’s claim that Ghanaians could use the Ghana card as a travel document in lieu of a passport. The 12th February 2022 tweet described Dr. Bawumia to be allergic to the truth with lies being embedded in his DNA. The tweet garnered 171 retweets and 727 likes.
“Our investigation revealed that @sammygyamfi2017 and @SammyGyamfi_ are both usernames that belong to the same Twitter account belonging to the communications director of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi. Thus, the username of the account was changed from @sammygyamfi2017 and @SammyGyamfi_. This was confirmed by archived versions of tweets by the account from when its username used to be @sammygyamfi2017″, the findings further disclosed.
