Minister Tumwebaze flags Facebook conman fleecing people in his name

The Minister of Gender, Labour and Social development Frank Tumwebaze has warned Ugandans not to follow victims of an imposter conning netizens in his name.

In a tweet, the minister said currently he has no engagement on Facebook since he cannot access his account and he only got to know about the imposter through his friends.

“ALERT: All my followers and friends plz note that am currently having no engagement on Facebook as I can’t access my account. I hv learnt thru friends that an imposter a one Luke is conning pple on Facebook claiming to be working in my office. Plz report to Police immediately,” Mr Tumwebaze said on Saturday.

Tumwebaze’s Facebook account is one of the many networking platforms belonging to Ugandan government officials and ruling party members that were shut down as the internet giant accused them of manipulating public debate before the 14 January polls.

“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network,” Facebook said in a statement, adding the decision was linked to the government ministry of information and communications technology.

“They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were,” it added.

On the other hand, Tumwebaze accused the social media platform of targeting Ugandan accounts and urged Facebook to unblock them.

“Plz @ITU @ITUSecGen one of the threats we must speak against in our digital ecosystem is this abuse of communication platforms by tech giants. Connectivity shdn’t be a right to enjoy at the mercy of Tech giants. @Facebook shd unblock selectively targeted #Ugandan accounts ASAP!” he tweeted.