A Nigerian music artiste, Charles Chukwuemeka Oputa, popularly known as Charly Boy, has shared a video alongside a claim that the United States had criticized Nigeria’s February 25 presidential election and asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to prove that the declared results are correct.
Charly Boy had posted a video alongside the claim on Twitter via his handle: @AreaFada1 with a caption that read:
“GBAGAM!! “ US has sent ‘missiles’ to INEC: Prove that the results you declared were correct!. Refused to congratulate Tinubu!”
The tweet has garnered over 6,500 retweets, more than 12,000 likes and over 800,000 views as of Sunday, April 9, 2023.
Another Twitter user, @EniyeAmeze, also tweeted the video with another caption thus:
“US said INEC has to prove that d result announcing 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗯𝘂 as President is correct. This congratulations Agbados are expecting isn’t coming anytime soon.
It will be recalled that the INEC had on March 1 declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.
Tinubu defeated 17 other candidates who took part in the election. He scored a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates, thus meeting the first constitutional requirement to be declared the winner.
INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the final results in the early hours of Wednesday, March 1, 2023 in Abuja, said Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second in the election. Atiku polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election.
Peter Obi of the Labour Party came third in the election with a total of 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes, Premium Times reported.
CLAIM
US criticizes Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election, asks INEC to prove that the declared results are correct.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING.
Checks revealed that the video was a footage from the conference of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) – a pro-democracy group – held at the National Press Club, Washington DC in the United States on March 8, 2023.
The FactCheckHub found the complete video in which W. Bruce DelValle, the General Counsel of NADECO, criticized INEC for certain issues in the electoral processes that saw Tinubu emerged as Nigeria’s President-elect.
However, the stance of the NADECO group doesn’t reflect the stance of the United States Government.
The Cable reported that the US State Department had congratulated Tinubu. The Vanguard also reported same.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows the US criticized Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election and asked INEC to prove that the declared results are correct is MISLEADING; findings revealed that the video shows the stance of the pro-democracy group, NADECO and not that of the US government.
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.
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