Bank Documents Reveals How FG Funded Adamu Garba’s Crowwe App To Rival Facebook, Twitter

By Sylvia LANO On Jun 23, 2021

A new report has alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration provided capital for Adamu Garba’s social media platform, Crowwe.

In an exclusive report from PeoplesGazette, the capital was provided as the Federal Government hoped that the firm would help it dominate internal communication amongst Nigerians and rival the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

The report alleged it obtained a bank document which shows there was a transfer of funds from Central Bank of Nigeria to IPI Solution, a engineering software firm own by Garba which developed Crowwe app.

A transfer of N136.8 million was made to IPI Solutions by CBN as advance on May 21, 2019, according to the document obtained by Gazette.

In 2015, few months after President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office, the social media bill was pushed by some members of the ruling party in order to regulate social media in the country but it was defeated.

Then in 2019, a was introduced by the Senate to criminalise the use of the social media in peddling false or malicious information.

Original title of the bill is Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill 2019 and it was sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa.

The bill which already passed second reading at the Senate was initially suspended following outcry from Nigerians.

However, many Nigerians especially youths have expressed disapproval against the Bill, saying it is aimed at gagging the press and infringing on the expression rights of individuals.

Another similar bill brought up proposed death penalty for online speech, but it was defeated under Bukola Saraki-led parliament.

A PeoplesGazette source claims;

It was while the government was trying to find ways to control the media space that Adamu Garba’s company was picked as one of the promising businesses that could proffer solutions. The seriousness of controlling social media cannot be overplayed.

Mr Garba earned instant name recognition in 2018 after showing interest in running for president against Mr Buhari. He summarily abandoned his campaign and became a recognisable voice in support of the president. The regime provided hundreds of millions to Mr Garba’s firm in anticipation that its Crowwe platform would make a sufficient dent on the appeal of Facebook and Twitter, officials briefed on the matter said under our policy on anonymous sources.

After the Crowwe was allegedly funded by the administration and introduced in the country, the app was rejected and ridiculed by many Nigerians and only few users have signed up since its inception.

As part of efforts to give life to Crowwe, Garba sought to push Twitter out of Nigeria, filing a lawsuit against the platform in the wake of last October’s historic #EndSARS campaign.

His hope was dashed this month when his platform failed to receive attention despite the government’s ban on Twitter.

Instead, Crowwe app was removed from Google Play Store a week after Twitter ban following a deluge of complaints from users and for copyright violation.

Even Buhari administration chose an Indian Twitter-like platform, Koo over his app following their exit from Twitter earlier this month.

The presidency did not return a request seeking clarification from The Gazette about its dealings with Garba. However, Garba confirmed to The Gazette that he received funds from the government, but said it was one of several payments the government paid for a series of “intervention” projects his company executed for the government.

Garba said;

We do projects and receive payments from the Central Bank. I think it is a project we did for the EFCC.

Crowwe was 100 per cent developed by us internally, We are even looking for investors locally and internationally. We are looking for investors to further scale up and improve Crowwe capacity.