Old video used to falsely report violence in Edo few days before election

Claim

Former Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, on his Twitter account with more than 75, 000 followers, shared a video to suggest that some thugs were arrested in Edo State ahead of the Governorship Election.

False: The claim that violence depicted in the video occurred in Edo State is false. The video was from a similar incident in Akwa Ibom in 2019.

Full Text

Just a few days before the Edo Governorship Election, Chidi Odinkalu, a former chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission shared a video on his Twitter account.

On his Twitter account @ChidiOdinkalu that has more than 75, 000 followers, Odinkalu shared a doctored video that shows a group of men who have been apprehended.

In the video, there is an inserted logo of All Progressives Congress (APC) with the face of the former chairman, Adams Oshiomole at the top and image of guns at the bottom.

The video also shows a man being interrogated and claiming that he was sent by a certain Tony Kabaku, a known APC affiliate in Edo State, on the orders of Oshiomole.

Odinkalu captioned the tweet ‘#EdoDecides2020 was meant to be an election? It is anything but....” to suggest that it happened in Edo State ahead of the Saturday, September 19, 2020, Governorship Election.

The video which was shared on Twitter on Wednesday, September 16 has more than 3, 000 views with hundreds of shares.

Verification

To fact-check this video, Pulse did a reverse image search on Google using screenshots from the video.

From the visually similar images provided in the results, it was easy to see that the same video has been around since March 2019.

The original video was published on Youtube in March 2019 and it indeed has similarities with Odinkalu’s claim.

In the original video, the guy being interrogated claimed that he was mobilised by Kabaka on the orders of Oshiomole to act as an election observer.

However, the election being referred to in the original video was the March 2019 Akwa Ibom Governorship Election which was mainly contested by Nsima Ekere of APC and then incumbent governor, Udom Emmanuel, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

The original video had no APC logo at the top and neither was there an image of a gun at the bottom.