On Saturday, July 20, 2024, the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, accused the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, of inciting his supporters to protest against the government.
Onanuga made this claim amidst the growing call by young Nigerians to hit the streets for a nationwide protest.
Also, Bayo Onanuga made the allegation against Peter Obi via a lengthy statement titled; REVEALED: Peter Obi’s supporters are the people planning mayhem in Nigeria: Obi should be held responsible for anarchy.
The statement was posted on his official X handle @aonanuga1956.
The post reads: “REVEALED: Peter Obi’s supporters are the people planning mayhem in Nigeria: Obi should be held responsible for anarchy.”
“Don’t be fooled: the malcontents planning to stage nationwide protests are supporters of Peter Obi, the failed presidential candidate of the Labour Party. And he should be held responsible for whatever crisis emanates from the action.”
“They are the people spreading the hashtags ‘EndBadGovernance’, ‘Tinubu Must Go,’ and ‘Revolution2024’.”
“They are not democrats but anarchists. They are attempting to call out our people via propaganda because their Messiah, Peter Obi, failed to win the Presidency in the 2023 election. As bad losers, they don’t have the patience to wait for another election in 2027; they would rather destabilise Nigeria by staging a civilian coup against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu”.
Screenshot of Bayo Onanuga’s post on X
Verification
This post went viral within a twinkle of an eye and in no time bloggers and many media outlets were reporting it.
As of the time of this fact check, the above post has garnered 1.6M impressions and 7.3K comments.
Claims like this, if not checked, could have a great impact on the country.
The widespread nature of this allegation and the potential consequences it has, especially at a critical time like this when Nigeria is at the verge of a mass protest, is what prompted this fact check you are reading.
We started our fact check with a thorough search through Peter Obi’s social media handles.
Obi’s social media handles are @PeterObi on X, and Mr. Peter Obi on Facebook.
Note: Both accounts are verified.
Obi has 1.2M followers on Facebook and 4.7M followers on X.
We searched through Obi’s X handle from 26/04/2024 till now.
We found that Peter Obi has not issued any statement regarding the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest or any other protest.
Meanwhile, we discovered that Obi in recent times has issued many comments about the policies of the current administration.
Screenshot from Peter Obi’s X handle
Interestingly, we also found a post by Obi advising Nigerians on several occasions to be law abiding citizens and avoid any form of lawlessness.
Screenshot of Peter Obi’s post on X
On Facebook, we searched from March 1, 2023, till date.
Again, there was no statement by Peter Obi supporting any protest.
Screenshot from Obi’s Facebook handle
We also verified Onanuga’s claim using video sharing platform YouTube.
We combined the keywords; Peter Obi Protest, for this verification.
We did not find any video showing Obi inciting his supporters to protest, as alleged by Bayo Onanuga.
Screenshot from YouTube
For further verification, we also search Google using the keywords; Peter Obi Protest, to see if any well-known media outlets had published any statement by Peter Obi supporting the protest or inciting his followers to stage any protest.
Again, we did not find such a statement.
Screenshot of search results from Google.
However, we did find something that will help our fact check.
Peter Obi Sues Bayo Onanuga
We found that on July 23, 2024, there were reports that Peter Obi had initiated a legal action against Bayo Onanuga.
This report was published by some well-known organisations including Punch Newspapers and The Cable.
As reported by the Punch, Obi gave Onanuga a 72-hour ultimatum to apologise for his claim that he is behind the planned nationwide protest.
Also, Obi vowed to file a defamation libel lawsuit if Onanuga failed to apologise.
Obi, through his counsel, Alex Ejesieme, demanded that the “public apology be published in four national newspapers – Vanguard, THISDAY, Punch, and The Cable – as well as Onanuga’s verified X handle #aonanuga1956”.
Obi’s counsel described the allegation as a “calculated plot” to demean and embarrass their client, causing significant harm to his reputation and emotional well-being.
The publication also attached screenshots of the Obi’s suit against Onanuga.
Screenshot of Obi’s law suite. Source: Punch
Before now, the Labour Party (LP), had refuted this claim by Onanuga.
The party denied the allegations leveled against Peter Obi.
This was published by many known media organisations including Punch Newspapers, Arise News, The Guardian, The Cable, etc.
According to Punch, the National Publicity Secretary of the LP, Obiora Ifoh, in a statement titled ‘Obi, Labour Party not involved in ‘EndBadGovernance’ protest,’ reiterated that it was wrong of Onanuga to link the LP and its national leader to the proposed ‘EndBadGovernance’ protest.
Conclusion
After hours of thorough investigation and verification, we can conclude that Bayo Onanuga’s claim that Peter Obi is inciting his followers to protest is false and misleading.
This is because there is no evidence in the public domain to back his claim.
Onanuga in his post failed to quote any credible source.
Also, he did not provide any evidence to back his claim.
Most importantly, we found that none of the hashtags Bayo Onanuga highlighted appeared in any of Obi’s posts on social media.
