By Pascal Ibe
Claim
An X user, AfonjaSlayer, published the photo of noble Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka as “a hunter in Ogun State.
Verdict
This is FALSE, as there wasn’t a time when a highly esteemed Noble Laureate winner was seen anywhere as a hunter.
Full Text
As the unending tribal in the X platform continues, a user, @AfonjaSlayer, shared a photo of the Noble Price in literature, Professor Wole Soyinka, as a hunter in Ogun State.
In a post recently, the X user posted the image with a caption that reads, “Do you all remember this man Wole Soyinka?
He’s now a hunter in Ogun state.”
The post generated over 12k views and more than 200 reposts.
Soyinka, a famous Nigerian playwright, was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “wide cultural perspective and… poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence.” He was the first sub-Saharan African to win the Prize in literature.[
Verification
First, the photo showing Soyinka as a hunter in Ogun State cannot be corroborated to be real by either any media platform or appropriate authorities anywhere as it looks photoshopped.
When FACTWATCH Nigeria carried out a Google Image Reverse Search, results showed this image first appeared online in 2014. A user on NairaLand Forum posted this photo and wrote, “(PHOTOS) Funny pic of Wole Soyinka hunting.”
NairaLand Forum is an online platform where everyone who has signed up to it, can share any article, videos, or images which may be true or false.
In 2016, a blog, orijoreporter used this same photo as a featured image in a report titled; “I TRUST SOYINKA AS AN APARO HUNTER- OBASANJO.”
The details of this report don’t state or confirm that the image was real.
Conclusion
The picture showing Prof. Soyinka as a hunter in Ogun State was manipulated first in 2014.
