Revealed! How Sammy Gyamfi and NDC hirelings schemed to politically discredit Bawumia with liar tag

A painstaking research by the African Academy for Open-Source Investigations (AAOSI), in collaboration with www.myjoyonline.com, has uncovered how the Director of Communications of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi and some hirelings affiliated to the NDC, deliberately orchestrated the negative tagging of Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to discredit him politically.

The research, which is part of the African Academy for Open-Source Investigations’ (AAOSI), efforts at combating fake news to strengthen democracies in Africa, delved into the origin of the deliberate labelling of Vice President Bawumia as a liar, with a Bawuliar hashtag created to drive trends. The organisation’s rshocking findings, discovered that it was a well coordinated plan by the NDC, led by Sammy Gyamfi.

The research uncovered that the negative labeling of Bawumia as a liar, was a tool deliberately deployed by the NDC to cast a slur on his integrity, anytime the Vice President 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,” said the report as it exposed the orchestration of Sammy Gyamfi and the NDC.

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 Twitter research did analysis of the actors that shaped the fake #Bawuliar twitter trend, 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 of were retweeted the most.

The origin and top players of the orchestrated #Bawuliar hashtag

Below is the research findings on how Sammy Gyamfi and other Twitter users linked to the NDC orchestrated the hashtag to label Vice President a liar, which the research findings concluded is for political expediency:

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 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.

The second most popular #Bawuliar tweet was another reaction by @SammyGyamfi to the same claim about the Ghana card on 10th August 2022. This time, he posted a video in which Ghana’s foreign minister, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, clarified that Ghanaians can use the Ghana card as a travel document only in instances when they are traveling to Ghana from other countries. This tweet garnered 163 retweets and 537 likes.

The third most popular #Bawuliar tweet was also by @SammyGyamfi on the same subject of the Ghana card being used as a travel document. In this tweet, he shared a Ghana Web publication that reported the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) statement that they do not have the power to certify the Ghana card as an electronic passport. The tweet, which garnered 86 retweets and 290 likes, also described Dr Bawumia as jocular and a serial liar.

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. See tweets below.

Screengrabs of archived tweet with @sammygyamfi2017 as username (left) and the same tweet by the same account with @SammyGyamfi_ as username (right) (Source: CfA using Wayback Machine and Twitter)

Screengrabs of archived tweet with @sammygyamfi2017 as username (left) and the same tweet by the same account with @SammyGyamfi_ as username (right) (Source: CfA using Wayback Machine and Twitter).

We identified Twitter account with username @Annanperry as the most influential account in respect to the #Bawuliar narrative. The account used #Bawuliar 97 times. @Annanperry identifies himself as a youth activist of the opposition National Democratic Congress. @Annanperry frequently amplifies pro-NDC narratives. This is evident in the accounts most used hashtags per its last 2192 tweets. The hashtags include #NDCDecides, #NDCPrimaries, #GalamseyGovernment, etc. (See screengrab below)

Screengrabs of @annanperry’s most used hashtags and the Twitter accounts that

The Twitter accounts that were involved in pushing the #Bawuliar narrative are heavily connected to each other. @SammyGyamfi_ has retweeted @Annanperry’s tweets 29 times. @AnnanPerry has also mentioned @SammyGyamfi_ in his tweets 20 times. @Annanperry retweeted @MPKwarteng’s tweets 59 times, retweeted @royal1kingly’s tweets 54 times and @Dejoh36’s tweets 53 times. Thus, @Annanperry is also strongly associated with @MPKwarteng, @royalkingly and @Dejoh36, all of which are part of the top 5 influential accounts that drove the #Bawuliar narrative on Twitter.

Visualization of the Twitter network that drove the #Bawuliar narrative on Twitter (Source: Joynews using Gephi)

Copy pasting technique used to drive #Bawuliar

Beside being the most influential account that drove the #Bawuliar, @Annanperry was also at the center of the coordinated campaign involving 28 Twitter accounts that copy pasted #Bawuliar tweets. @Annanperry would usually be the first person to send out the tweet, after which, various Twitter accounts would tweet the same content, word for word, with #Bawuliar. Most of these tweets were excerpts of an opinion article titled ‘Digitization of Ghana’s economy: An insight into John Mahama’s massive investments’. Former Minister for Communications of Ghana and Presidential spokesperson, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah co-authored this article with the Director-General of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Dr. George Atta-Boateng.