FALSE: A viral video claiming three men have been killed during the elections did not happen in Nigeria
Claim: Three people have been shot in Nigeria on election day
Source: Twitter
Verdict: FALSE
Researched by Gifty Tracy Aminu
A viral video showing four men on two motorbikes, wielding guns, and disrupting the voting process at a polling station (here and here) is being widely circulated on Twitter and portrayed as having happened in Nigeria in the ongoing general elections.
The 30-second-long video also shows police officers gunning down the armed men.
According to one Twitter user: “three souls down just because of one politician. How much dem pay you. See people Papa na.”
Another Twitter user said: “Happening now in ikorodu. Stay safe guys!!! #obiwon #NigeriaElections2023 Peter obi No Labour Party”
A screengrab of a Tweet
Background
Nigeria goes to the polls today, February 25, 2023, to elect a new President, Senators and House Representatives across the 36 states of the country.
The race for the next president is being contested among 18 registered political parties, and 93,469,008 registered voters are expected to cast their ballot.
Fact-check
Using InVID Verification tools, FactSpace has found that the video first appeared on the internet during Ghana’s preparation towards the general election in 2020.
Analysing the video, we found that it was captured at Ghana’s Police Headquarters and the Police uniforms were for the Ghana Police Service.
FactSpace also noticed that the ballot boxes have the Coat of Arms, a symbol used by the Ghana Electoral Commission on all electoral boxes, distributed to polling stations in the country.
Meanwhile, using Reverse Image Search, FactSpace traced the video to Pulse Ghana’s Facebook Page, an online news platform, which published the video on November 5, 2020.
“Ghana Police Training for election 2020,” the news portal, Pulse Ghana captioned the video.
