CLAIM: ‘‘Africa is just a cemetery for Africans. How could a cemetery be developed?” – says Vladimir Putin
CONCLUSION: VERY LIKELY TO BE FALSE
FULL TEXT:
A blog post by The Inspirational says, “When an African becomes rich, his bank accounts are in Switzerland. He travels to France for Medical treatment. He invests in Germany. He buys from Dubai. He consumes Chinese. He prays in Rome or Mecca. His children study in Europe. He travels to Canada, the USA, Europe for tourism. If he dies, he will be buried in his native country of Africa. Africa is just a cemetery for Africans. How could a cemetery be developed?
“Africa will never be independent, Africans believe in Europeans, Americans, and Chinese more than themselves. They don’t trust themselves at all, African technocrats/Engineers aren’t given the platform to practice what they studied instead they hire Chinese to construct roads for themselves’’ ~Putin Asks!
This post has gone viral and we were able to trace it to different sites, four different youtube channels, and the post itself on The Inspirational has amassed about six thousand one hundred shares, with reactions from over three thousand people!
IT SEEMS LIKE A RIDICULOUSLY MADE-UP CLAIM!
In our research, Dubawa found out about another newstory with the exact statement claimed to have been made by Vladimir Putin; but this time, the subject was Pakistan, not Africa. The statement reads: Pakistan is a cemetery for Pakistani. A fact-check done by Fact Crescendo, an Indian Fact-checking site, calls the claim FALSE. In their words,
‘‘These types of hoax messages are being shared by mischievous people to create confusion in the minds of readers and to push a specific confirmation bias. This kind of message has also been shared on Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp’’.
In the Nigerian case, we found the news VERY LIKELY TO BE FALSE. One, if Vladimir Putin actually made such a comment, notable news platforms would have quickly carried it and it would have made headlines. That didn’t happen! Only a news platform notable for spreading false information posted the story. There was even no mention where and when the statement was made.
Two, the YouTube channels that joined in promoting the information did not provide videos of Vladimir Putin actually mouthing those words. Instead, the videos consist of pictures of Putin in the background accompanied by the voiceover of random people making the claim.
Three, the post makes some uninformed statements that can hardly come from the President of a country like Russia. In one of the paragraphs, it says that Africa’s best president was Gaddafi, as if to say that Africa is a single country.
While we are not checking whether the claims made are actually true (that is if Africans own bank accounts in Switzerland, travel to Canada, etc), we can say that the chances of Vladimir Putin actually saying those things are very slim.
This factcheck will be updated if new information arises. We’ve also noticed multiple claims on Facebook alleging that the President of Russia made inciting comments about Nigeria or Africa, or is in support of secessionists; all those claims are unlikely to be true.
