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Claim: An X user shared a video claiming that activist and former presidential candidate Sowore met with the National Security Adviser to the president, Nuhu Ribadu.
Verdict: Misleading! DUBAWA’s findings reveal that the meeting took place in 2018, when Sowore was campaigning in the Northeast ahead of the 2019 presidential election.
Full Text
As political opponents compete for public support, their loyalists must work harder to impress the masses through smear campaigns and propaganda against their rivals to score points.
Against this backdrop, an X user, Osoba Adelani (@delaniosoba), posted a video showing popular Nigerian activist and 2023 presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore meeting with the president’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, at his home in Yola. The user then advised the youth not to blindly support political rivals to their detriment because they are allies in the political scene.
“Calling politicians unprintable names, (does not mean) they are not friends. Be wise. This is Omoyele Sowore with Nuhu Ribadu in Ribadu’s house in Yola. Don’t go and kill yourself fighting another person’s fight,” the X user wrote.
DUBAWA also found the video on X (here) with more engagements and on Facebook (here, here, here, here, here)
As of April 30, 2025, the claim has been viewed 30 times.
To forestall the spread of disinformation, DUBAWA decided to verify the post.
Verification
Dubawa took a few keyframes from the video and subjected them to Google’s Reverse Image Search. The result linked us to a similar video shared on the YouTube channel WM TV in 2018.
The YouTube video labelled “Omoyele Sowore meeting with Nuhu Ribadu, former EFFC Chair, in Yola, Adamawa,” spotlights when Sowore campaigned in the Northeast region before the 2019 general election.
Although DUBAWA did not find credible outlets that posted the video at the time, we discovered that the former presidential candidate had posted it on his Facebook page in 2018. Sowore described the “informal meeting” as a concerted effort to “take back the country from corrupt leadership.”
Conclusion
The claim is misleading. Although the duo met, their meeting was in 2018.
