Fact Check

Clip falsely claims Bola Tinubu’s ‘daughter’ warned him not to rig Nigerian election

Copyright AFP 2017-2023. All rights reserved.

A day before Nigeria’s electoral commission declared Bola Tinubu the winner of the presidential race, a Facebook page published a video with claims that it showed his daughter warning him not to rig the election. But this claim is false: the woman in the video is not Tinubu’s daughter – she is Nigerian activist Adetoun Onajobi. AFP Fact Check debunked another claim about Onajobi and the video before the election.

“Tinubu’s daughter warns her father to stop rigging the election and make peace,” reads a Facebook post published on February 28, 2023, and which has since been shared more than 26,000 times.

The clip was published by an account that regularly shares content in support of Labour Party’s presidential candidate Peter Obi.

A screenshot showing the false post, taken on March 3, 2023

The first part of the 8-minute video shows a woman warning APC’s Tinubu of his impending rejection at the polls by voters.

The woman referred to Tinubu as “my father” in the clip and spoke in a mixture of pidgin English and Yoruba, widely spoken in southwest Nigeria.

“The fire that will burn you, is not that of hell fire but technology fire, this presidency that you are running up and down, carry your leg and soak it inside water and relax your muscle,” the woman said.

The woman warned that even “money” would not save Tinubu in the presidential election.

But the claim that this video shows Tinubu’s daughter warning him not to rig the election is false.

Tinubu declared winner

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on March 1, 2023, declared Tinubu winner of the presidential election after he secured more than eight million votes.

But delays in uploading results from various voting centres to INEC’s backend portal left many concerned. The electoral commission said the delays were due to technical hitches.

On February 28, 2023, the day the claim was published on Facebook, INEC had only announced the results from a few states.

Not Tinubu’s daughter

AFP Fact Check had previously debunked the same video in October 2022. At the time, it was being used to falsely claim that Tinubu’s “daughters” were criticising him ahead of the election.

Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check traced the video to an Instagram account named “@justadetoun”, which features numerous selfie videos by Onajobi, who has in the past been interviewed in a Channels TV show where she was introduced as an activist.

The original video was posted on the “@justadetoun” Instagram account on July 19, 2022 — long before Nigeria’s presidential election.

The original video also appeared on a Facebook page in Onajobi’s name.

A screenshot showing Onajobi’s Facebook’s page, taken on March 3, 2023

In the original video, she indicates that she is from Ijebu in Ogun state, southwest Nigeria. The Facebook page in her name also indicates she is from Ijebu. Tinubu, meanwhile, is from Lagos state.

Moreover, it is not uncommon for Yorubas – the ethnic group to which Onajobi and Tinubu belong – to refer to someone who is older as “my father”.

In the final results declared by INEC, Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate Atiku Abubakar came second with 6.98 million votes while the Labour Party’s Obi came third with 6.1 million votes. The presidential election saw 27 percent of total registered voters of over 93 million cast their votes.

Both Abubakar and Obi have announced their intention to challenge Tinubu’s victory in court.

AFP Fact Check sent a message to Onajobi for comment and will update this article if she responds.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. All rights and credits reserved to respective owner(s).

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