Claim: A throwback photo attributed to Tinubu and current Nigeria’s Chief Justice has gone viral on Twitter.
Verdict: FALSE. The image is that of Bola Tinubu and Dele Momodu from 1996.
Full Text
Following the emergence of Bola Tinubu as the February 25 Presidential election winner, the opposition parties have expressed dissatisfaction with the election and collation process by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party have refused to concede defeat. They have subsequently gone to court to request access to sensitive materials deployed by INEC for the presidential election.
A supporter of the Labour Party, Obident Nature (@Naturenwa), doubts the credibility of the court procedure. Questioning the court’s integrity, @Naturenwa, in a now-deleted tweet, shared a picture of Tinubu and a man he claimed to be the current Chief Judge of the Federation, Olukayode Ariwoola.
“Tinubu and current Chief Judge of FRN,” the tweet caption reads.
Before the tweet was taken down, it had garnered 242,000 views, 63 likes, 38 retweets and 325 quote retweets. The picture has also gone viral on WhatsApp with different narratives.
DUBAWA decided to investigate the claim due to its virality and the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the 2023 Presidential election.
Verification
We deeply analysed the picture using the Invid photo debunker application. We discovered it was an old picture of Tinubu with Dele Momodu, a Nigerian Journalist, in 1996 while in London.
We also manually searched Mr Momodu’s Twitter (@DeleMomodu) feed and found that he posted the picture on March 4, 2021.
We also compared the image of Mr Momodu and Mr Ariwoola and saw no similarity.
Conclusion
The alleged throwback image of Mr Tinubu and the Chief Judge is that of Mr Tinubu and Mr Momodu. The claim is, therefore, false.
