Claim: Facebook user alleged that Peter Obi announced Aisha Yesufu as his vice presidential candidate.
Verdict: False. Although the origin of the video could not be traced, available videos of Peter Obi’s rally in Borno state do not show him naming Aisha Yesufu as his running mate. The party’s spokesperson has also debunked this.
Full Text
Amid the campaign rallies across the country, a Facebook user Willy Ibimina Jim-George shared a short video clip with the caption, “Peter Obi announces Aisha Yesufu as his vice presidential candidate.
Even though the 11 seconds clip was cut short at the mention of the name Aisha, the Facebook user noted it was Aisha Yesufu, an activist who co-founded the #BringBackOurGirls movement and has been vocal about the #Obidient movement that was referenced here.
“Peter Obi announces Aisha Yesufu as a vice presidential candidate,” part of the caption read.
Another user Stanley Chinonye re-shared the same video clip posted by Ayekooto Akindele with the caption, “Did you hear that Peter Obi said that his vice presidential candidate is Aisha?”
Recall that in July 2022, Peter Obi named Datti Baba-Ahmed, the founder of Baze University Abuja, as his running mate for the 2023 presidential election.
How then will Mr Obi name Aisha Yesufu months after the window for replacing a running mate had closed and with Aisha Yesufu’s clear stand that she can’t be Peter Obi’s running mate?
These questions, other suspicions and the timing of this claim prompted us to verify it.
Verification
Watching the 11 seconds video, these were the words we could make out: “Several thousand… Borno today. The vice presidential candidate Aisha….” seeing there were a lot of missing contexts, we conducted a keyword search, but that did not lead to any news report on this assertion.
A reverse image search was also not helpful owing to the poor quality of the video.
Seeing that Peter Obi also mentioned Borno in the clip, we conducted a keyword search for videos from his rally in Borno state just to find the source of the clip. We found a nine-minute, 46 seconds video clip by Chizzy media on Youtube which didn’t show any mention of Aisha as a vice presidential candidate.
The only mention of Aisha was at the beginning of the video when Mr Obi was talking about security issues and the need for security personnel on the frontline of the battle to be assured their country is behind them.
“… that is why I told Aisha that everyone around will make sure that if a policeman or soldier goes out to fight criminals, he will do so assured that the state is behind him,” Mr Obi said in the video.
Another one-minute 15 seconds Youtube video by TVC only showed a few seconds clip of Peter Obi speaking on nothing related to this claim.
Mr Datti is still listed as Mr Obi’s running mate on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) website.
We also contacted Akin Osuntokun, the Director General of the Labour Party president Campaign Council via calls and direct messages but didn’t get a response.
We subsequently reached out to the party’s spokesperson, Yunusa Tanko, who debunked this.
“Please, this is completely fake news. We have our vice president in Datti Baba-Ahmed,” his response read.
Conclusion
Our findings do not show any video with Peter Obi naming Aisha Yesufu as his running mate, and the party has also denied the claim.
