By Pascal Ibe
Introduction
The war of words and banter between supporters of President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the supporters of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), is not ending anytime soon as the campaign towards next year’s election continues.
The supporters of both presidential candidates for the 2027 presidential election can go to the extent of maligning each other’s candidates, such as attributing false comments, creating AI-generated images, as well as spreading a barrage of misinformation to portray each other’s candidates in a bad light.
These acts have shown that political misinformation and disinformation may threaten next year’s election, with many Nigerians believing the false claims without seeking to verify them.
Claim
Supporters of President Tinubu on Sunday 1 November, posted (archived here) an Image which claims to show Obi wearing a neck collar after allegedly breaking his neck.
The APC supporters also claimed that Obi travelled out of Nigeria and is being admitted to a hospital abroad.
An X user, @Bayo_Bilisi posted the photo alongside a caption that reads, “Peter Obi don drop OK picture from hospital. I thought Obidiots were denying he didn’t break his neck while trying to prove his fitness on a Gym treadmill 😂.”
Amplifying this, another X user and Tinubu’s supporter, @abdullahayofe, posted a clip from a content creator, CartoonBoy TV, who believed that the image was real and then went on to criticise Obi in the video.
The claim also appeared on X here and here, with many believing it.
Verification
But here is what we found! First, FACTWATCH Nigeria checked the official social media pages of Obi and found that at no time did he post that image or announce that he was hospitalised abroad.
Rather, posts seen on his pages show the NDC candidate and former Anambra State governor, is actively campaigning.
This is an indicator that the image and post may have been fabricated to deliberately mislead the public.
Secondly, manual checks on the image show that it looks unnatural and photoshopped. This is because, in the picture, Obi struck a pose that, ordinarily, a person in that medical condition wouldn’t have done.
Checking this further, FACTWATCH Nigeria subjected the image to AI image detection devices and ran forensic analysis on it.
Results from the forensic analysis indicate that the image was created using AI generative tools.
The devices, DeepAI and ZeroGPT were used to check the image.
Lastly, no credible news organisation in Nigeria, as of 1st November, reported that Obi was admitted to a hospital abroad.
Verdict
Concrete findings by FACTWATCH Nigeria have found that the image, alongside the claim that Obi broke his neck and is being admitted to a hospital abroad, is FALSE.
