|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: An X user shared a video claiming that Mudashiru Obasa, the Lagos State House of Assembly speaker, told citizens to vote for APC even if the party’s candidate is a criminal.
Verdict: Misleading! Initially posted on TikTok, the video shows Obasa instructing APC supporters to support the candidate the party has chosen and not oppose them, regardless of their moral standing.
Full Text
An X user, @Omoelerinjare, with over 50,000 followers, shared a video claiming that Mudashiru Obasa, speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, has encouraged citizens to vote for any candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) even if the person is a criminal.
The 30-second video shared on June 14, 2025, was captioned “Any candidate that APC presents, whether the person is a criminal or not, once APC has chosen to present the person as a candidate, you have no choice unless you are ready to leave the party.”
When DUBAWA viewed the clip on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, it had generated over 126,000 views, 360 likes, 385 reposts, 170 bookmarks, and 89 quotes.
Meanwhile, a review of comments under the video established that while some X users criticised Obasa’s political party for such utterances, others dismissed them as misinterpreted.
“He didn’t say whether criminal or not. He said, whether good or bad, sir!!! This is the literal interpretation.” @Phemoragh wrote.
Another user, @Ashman_babane, asserted: “Nigeria is gone. See people still dancing and giving cheers to those ruining their lives.”
“The C in APC stands for criminals,” @Occiandiaali added.
DUBAWA deemed it appropriate to investigate the claim due to its political sensitivity and the varying interpretations it had received.
Verification
We conducted multiple keyword searches on Google and reviewed credible media reports in Nigeria to confirm whether the speaker made that statement. However, we found no report about it.
DUBAWA observed that the video uploaded on X has a TikTok watermark, so we searched. We discovered that the video is a TikTok clip shared by Bodeolabisi on June 13, 2025, with a caption, “Tinubu 2027: Obasa unveils Orisun House, Alimosho campaign office donated by Ejigbadero.”
We noticed that the TikTok footage does not attribute any statement to Obasa but links the video to the unveiling of Orisun House, which was built for Tinubu by Abiodun Ejigbado, a political leader with the APC in Lagos State.
DUBAWA transcribed the video recorded in Yoruba to, “The party chose someone, you are saying he or she is not good; do you want to change the choice? Or do you want to go to another party? Whether the person is good or bad, once the party has chosen someone, he or she has been deemed good by the party.”
From the interpretation, we saw that Mr Obasa did not mention whether the person was a criminal, as portrayed by the X claimant.
Conclusion
DUBAWA discovered that the comment made in the video was taken out of context, as the translation of the Yoruba words spoken by Mr Obasa revealed otherwise. Therefore, the claim is misleading.
