By Pascal Ibe

Claim

An X user, @HighChiefOkoro, shared a video of an attack on WASSCE students in the Southeast alongside the claim that Peter Obi refused to condemn the act.

Verdict

This claim is FALSE. First, the attack occurred in 2021 and is not recent. The 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate condemned the attack on WAEC students but absolved the IPoB.

Full Text

In recent times, southeast Nigeria has witnessed an unprecedented level of insecurity; ranging from herdsmen attacks on farmers, banditry, and more recently, killings and wanton destruction of lives and properties by suspected Biafran agitators and other criminal elements. These situations have badly affected the socio-economic advancement of the zone. To ameliorate the appalling situation, leadership of the southeast zone through the states’ governors has embarked on increased security budgetary allocation, installation of Computer-based Closed Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) in some strategic parts of the states to enhance surveillance, heightening of physical security measures around the states aimed at deterring or disrupting potential attacks, strengthening of security agencies through the provision of security facilities etc.

Amidst this unending situation in the region, many have accused the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate and ex-governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, of his silence and refusal to condemn these killings in Nigeria’s Southeast.

One of these people, @HighChiefOkoro on the X platform, has posted a video of an attack on the students participating in the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and claimed that Mr Obi didn’t condemn this incident.

According to @HighChiefOkoro, the incident occurred recently.

He shared the video with a caption that reads, “Peter Obi has consistently remained silent in the face of the wickedness and backwardness imposed by IPOB.

“How can students be denied the right to write exams on Mondays across the entire Southeast?

“Junior WAEC candidates were chased out of their exam halls and their bikes were burnt. This is terrorism and silence in the face of it is complicity.

The post has garnered over 22k views and more than 200 reposts.

Verification

When the Keyframes from the video were subjected to a Google Lens search, results showed that this incident occurred in 2021.

Corroborating this further, a report by Punch online in September 2021, confirmed that the hoodlums stopped students at the Comprehensive Secondary School, Nkume, in the Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, from taking the English Language paper in the ongoing West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations.

Sources disclosed that the students were preparing to begin the exam when the attackers struck and chased them away.

While the gunmen shot, students and teachers, including their supervisors, fled.

An indigene of the community told PUNCH Metro that the gunmen set ablaze some motorcycles belonging to some of the staff and students of the school.

Read this story here and here.

On whether Mr Peter Obi condemned the incident, FACTWATCH Nigeria searched and found another news publication in 2021 that reported that Mr Obi condemned the attack, describing it as “un-Igbo, out of place and misguided aggression”. But he absolved the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) of any complicity in the attack.

Obi said he did not believe any Igbo man would contemplate attacking innocent school children, more so those taking their WAEC exams, to compete with the rest of West Africans over academic excellence.

He said that education should ideally be treated as something “sacred’, because it is not just about the future of the children, but also the future of society.

See this report published by another news organization in Nigeria here.

Conclusion

The X user published a four-year-old video alongside a claim that Peter Obi didn’t condemn the attack on students in Nigeria’s Southeast.