By Pascal Ibe
Introduction
The exchange of misinformation among supporters of politicians in Nigeria in the campaign season towards next year’s election has continued to go on.
Particularly, the supporters of the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Pete Obi and President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, are the main proponents of misinformation since the campaign season started.
They created fake images, speeches, and videos and attributed them to each other’s favourite candidates to ridicule them.
But in the midst of these deliberate acts, some Nigerians believe this barrage of misinformation at the slightest sight.
FACTWATCH Nigeria has debunked some of these claims in the past here and here.
Claim
Many people on the X platform have published a front page of the Leadership newspaper, dated 19 September, which claims to show a headline about alleged Obi’s planned visit to Guru Maharaj on September 26.
Maharaj is a popular is a Nigerian spiritual leader. He lives in Ibadan. He has declared himself to be a Living Perfect Master, Guru Maharaj Ji, and is also called the “Black Jesus”. He says that he has power over all illnesses and all problems affecting humanity.
The X users who posted the newspaper front page, mocked Obi over the alleged visit to Maharaj, calling it an act of desperation to be president.
The headline on the newspaper reads, “Peter Obi Storms Guru Maharaj Temple On 26th September”
One of them on X, @BayoBilisi who shared (archived here) the newspaper front page, captioned it, “Maybe after visiting Gurumaraji, he will visit Olumba Olumba 😂This man na hustler!”
The newspaper front page was also posted on X here and here.
Verification
To verify whether the newspaper front page is real, we searched for the Leadership Newspaper front page dated 19 September on the official pages of the newspaper and found that the original newspaper headline on that day was different from the one which claims to show Obi’s planned visit to Maharaj.
The original headline on the Leadership newspaper front page on 19 September, reads, ” Niger Miners’ Tragedy: I lost my son, 9 relatives — Grieving Father
This is the first indication that the newspaper circulated on X was fabricated.
Another proof that the headline about Obi’s planned visit to Maharaj is false is that as of Tuesday morning, 22 September, no credible news website or newspaper has reported or confirmed the claim to be true.
We later subjected the newspaper front page circulating on X to AI detection tools and discovered that it was indeed created by AI.
FACTWATCH Nigeria used DeepAI and SightEngine to analyse the newspaper front page.
Verdict
By finding out that the original headline on the front page of the Leadership newspaper was different from the one being posted online, it is therefore confirmed that the newspaper front page is FALSE.
