Claim: Hollywood actor, Tom Hanks, endorsed the candidacy of Peter Obi.
There is no record to show Tom Hanks endorsed the candidacy of Peter Obi or made reference to him at any point.
Full Text
Endorsements by political actors, religious actors and influencers are seen as a win for politicians, especially by their supporters who love to amplify such endorsements.
Recently, the screenshot of a Facebook post alleging Hollywood actor, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, popularly known as Tom Hanks, endorsed the candidacy of Peter Obi, went viral.
“If Peter Obi was an American or even African American, Americans would have given him a one-way presidential ticket without him contesting,” part of the post read.
The virality of the claim and requests from our readers prompted us to verify this screenshot.
Verification
To find the original post which seemed to have originated from Facebook, we conducted a keyword search on Facebook and found this has been shared by Best News Network, Readitt and several other Facebook users who attributed this to Philip Ojealao.
DUBAWA conducted a search to find posts by Philip Ojealao on Facebook and found that the post with this claim was shared on Sunday, July 17, 2022.
The post which had garnered over 14,000 likes, 1,000 comments and over 2,000 shares credited this claim to Tom Hanks.
We researched the actor and found his official account on Instagram and Twitter. On Instagram, Tom Hanks (@tomhanks) did not have any posts related to Peter Obi.
On Twitter, we observed that @tomhanks did not have a recent post; his last post was in May 2022.
A Google search also does not show any report of the actor making any comments related to Mr Obi.
Conclusion
Our findings show Tom Hanks did not make any post with this claim or any comment related to this claim. This makes the claim false.
