Nigerian social media users circulated posts claiming that former president Olusegun Obasanjo arrived at the national collation centre with results from the 2023 election showing Labour Party’s Peter Obi had won by a landslide. But this is false: live footage from the ballot counting centre shows Obasanjo -- who backed Obi -- was not in attendance on the stipulated day, and one of the main images circulating in the posts showing him in a room full of people was taken in 2019. Furthermore, at the time the claims were made, only a few states had declared their results.

“Breaking news: INEC in shock as Obasanjo showed up at collation centre in with original results from 36 States (sic),” reads a Facebook post published on February 27, 2023 — two days after Nigeria held general elections. It has since been deleted but was archived here.

The post was published by an account that regularly shares content in support of Obi and has been viewed more than 270,000 times.

The accompanying video shows a still image of Obasanjo in a room full of people. It is overlaid with a voice that claims that the purported result that he presented to the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC) had Obi coming first by a margin of 10 million votes, with the People’s Democratic Party candidate Atiku Abubakar in second, four million votes ahead of the ruling All Progressives Congress Party’s candidate, Bola Tinubu.

Obasanjo had backed Obi in the election.

Other posts on Twitter (here and ...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiLWh0dHBzOi8vZmFjdGNoZWNrLmFmcC5jb20v...