Claim: A Facebook user claims that the daughter of Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) recently graduated from the University of Chicago.
The claim is false. Mr Osodeke told DUBAWA that he does not have any daughter. Further findings revealed that the pictures attached to this claim were sourced from different websites.
Full Text
Amidst conversations around industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ekiti Princess, a Facebook user made a post to depict a graduation ceremony of an alleged daughter of Emmanuel Osodeke, ASUU president.
The post, which has since been widely shared and republished by bloggers, sarcastically congratulates the president of ASUU and thanked him for keeping students at home while his daughter studied abroad.
Attached to the claim is a collage of pictures showing a lady who took a pose with non-Nigerian students. The same attachment also featured Mr Osodeke.
A description on the pictures reads: “This is Juliana Chidera Victor Osodeke, Emmanuel Osodeke’s 21-year-old Last Daughter Who Recently Graduated From The University of Chicago, Illinois, United States.”
This allegation has stirred debates among users who fault Mr Osodeke and a few others who doubt its authenticity. Hence, DUBAWA decided to run this check.
Verification
DUBAWA contacted Mr Osodeke via a telephone call. Bluntly but clearly, he debunked the claim.
“I don’t have a daughter. So why will my daughter graduate when I don’t have a daughter? How will I with my N400 thousand salary a month, pay school fees of ten million. You see, these are just the tactics of the government to see how they can create confusion within the system instead of solving the problem. It’s so sad,” he said
This is further confirmed by a BBC Pidgin profiling, published sometime in 2021.
Furthermore, we cropped the collaged pictures attached to this claim into segments and made reverse image searches on the individual results.
Upon completion, the first photo was traced to a 2014 publication of My School Gist, a blog which praised one Anita Osariemen Omonuwa for being “the first black woman to graduate from the University of Reading UK with a first class degree”.
The next photo was traced to a website which described the students seen as the “inaugural cohort of Obama Scholars” who graduated with Masters Degree from the “Harris School of Public Policy” at the University of Chicago between 2018 and 2019.
While an image of Mr Osodeke could be identified, one of the collaged pictures did not produce a clear result.
We, therefore, reverse-searched the last fragment and pinned it to a recent convocation ceremony that took place at the University of Chicago, Illinois, United States.
While we were investigating the claim made, Ekiti Princess posted a follow-up comment which further proved the information shared as untrue.
It reads: “Have seen the notification so many news have picked this post and cast it as a news
If this post is fake pls am so sorry Nigerians
“But pls let our government do something about this ongoing strike may God continue to help us in this country
My sincere apologies to Nigerians.”
Conclusion
Asides that the pictures attached to the claim were obtained from different websites, the ASUU president has told DUBAWA that he does not have any daughter. Therefore, the claim that his daughter has graduated from the University of Chicago is false.
