A video clip showing the candidate of the People Democratic Party(PDP) in Kogi State governorship election, Dino Melaye, has surfaced on Facebook with the claim that the former senator fainted following the announcement of the election result on Monday, November 13, 2023.
The video, which has the logo of Channels TV, shows Dino Melaye being assisted out of a car allegedly rushed to a place that looks like a hospital —a situation that did show the former senator might be suffering from a sickness.
The clip is circulating following the announcement of the results of the Kogi governorship polls on Monday.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) declared the candidate of All Progressives Congress Governorship candidate, Usman Ododo, as the winner of the 11th November governorship election in the State.
Ododo won the election with 446,237 votes, beating his closest rival, Murtala Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party who garnered 259,052, while Dino Melaye of PDP got 46,362 votes.
The video which was also published by Facebook page Diamond TV on Tuesday, 14th November 2023 with the caption: “Dino Melaye Fall Sick Immediately he lost the election.”
Additionally, a Facebook user, Specie posted the video on the Tuesday, 14th November, 2023 with the caption: “Dino Malaye fainted upon hearing his loss at Saturday poll. Thank God for those who were with him then otherwise he would have been a goner.”
Eden Isong also posted the video on Tuesday, 14th November on Facebook with the same caption.
CLAIM
Dino Melaye fainted after the announcement of the 2023 Kogi State governorship election result.
THE FINDINGS
Findings shows that the video is an old one, thus the caption attached to it is MISLEADING.
Using Google Reverse Image search to verify the video thumbnail, it shows that the footage has been online since at least January 2019.
Credible media reports including from Channels TV show that the incident was when men of the Nigeria Police Force laid siege on Senator Melaye’s residence in Abuja after locking himself indoor for eight days. This has nothing to do with the announcement of the governorship poll results by the electoral umpire. Other reports about it could be seen here and here.
THE VERDICT
The video showing Dino Melaye being assisted out of a car is an old footage which was first reported in January 2019.
* This fact-check was written by Shereefdeen Ahmad, a fellow of the ICIR’s Countering Misinformation and Promoting Media Literacy project, supported by the German Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria.
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