Nas Daily Calls Cacao Project a ‘Fake Story’

In a better-late-than-never statement on the issues that hurled him for the past week, Nas Daily creator Nuseir Yassin finally spoke up.

In a six-minute video uploaded today, Yassin called Louise Mabulo’s “The Cacao Project” a fake story.

“One day, unfortunately, we stumbled upon a fake story in the Philippines. The Cacao Project on paper was supposed to be a non-profit that helps farmers. In reality, it’s a for-profit that exploits farmers. We said, we cannot do this video in good conscience. We cannot show you things that we are not confident of,” he said.

It’s not the first time Yassin called “The Cacao Project” a scam.

Yassin posted about the project and said it was a “fake story” on August 5.

“Even though we flew in for two days, we had to pack up and leave because I will never ever put fake news on Nas Daily. I was so sad because we have invested tens of hours to support you,” he wrote.

The issue originally stemmed from Yasin’s Nas Academy launching the Whang-Od Academy, where Philippines’ oldest traditional tattoo artist, called “mambabatuk” becomes the teacher. Whang-od’s grandniece Grace Palicas said the mambabatuk did not consent to the said program. She added that Yassin is exploiting the Kalinga culture and profit from the age-old traditions of their tribe.

Nas Daily Did Not Exploit Whang-od, Yassin Defends

Additionally, Yassin denied the allegations that he exploited Whang-od in the same video.

“The same people said that we used Whang-od, which is also false. In everything we do, we get permission. We worked with the family directly and got their consent. [Nas Daily] made sure to support them during these difficult times. We did this as an act of support, not an act of exploitation,” he said.

Netizens started to boycott Nas Daily following the issue. Currently, the Facebook page lost more than 500,000 followers because of this.

The issue also made Yassin decide to halt operations in the Philippines. Several mentors of the Nas Academy, including Catriona Gray also stopped accepting new students following the issue.

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