Claim
On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, a publication surfaced online claiming that “Rep. Kingsley Ogundu Chinda was presented to President Tinubu and received approval and total support from the president”.
The claim was published on Facebook by Newshour1, a Facebook page with 23k followers.
As of the time of this factcheck, the post has garnered 100 likes, 149 comments and 12 shares.
Part of the post reads: “Wahala be like waiting again
“BREAKING NEWS….
“He has been presented to the President, and His Excellency President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has given his approval and total support for him to be the next Governor of Rivers State, under the platform of the APC.
“Rep. Kingsley Ogundu Chinda Is The Next Governor Of Rivers State.
“Rivers People Are O.K
“I Win , You Win, We Win
“Congratulations To Rivers People”.
This post was accompanied with two photos of Kingsley Chinda and President Bola Tinubu making this claim even more believable.
Screenshot of the post from Facebook
But, did the two politicians meet four days ago?
Did President Tinubu pick or anoint Chinda as the next governor of Rivers State?
Let’s find out!!!
Verification
First, we visited the social media handles of both politicians.
We scrolled through the Facebook page of Kingsley Chinda to confirm if he made any post of visiting President Tinubu on the said date.
We found no post of such on the 14k followers page.
Screenshot from Facebook
Also, we visited Google to see if any reputable media companies had published this information.
We combined the keywords: Kingsley Chinda taken to President Tinubu.
We found that no reputable media outlets shared the report.
Screenshot from Google
For further verification, we downloaded the images attached to the post shared by Newshour1.
The aim was to trace the photos to their origin using an image verification tool called; Google Reverse Image.
We inserted one of the images and clicked on the “About This Image” button.
We found that the images exist from 2024.
Screenshot from Google
To further bury this claim, we discovered that on the said date of the meeting between Kingsley Chinda and President Tinubu, the Nigerian president was in Kenya for the France-Africa economic cooperation meeting.
The report was published here, here, and here.
Conclusion
After the investigation, we can conclude that the claim that Rep. Kingsley Chinda was taken to President Tinubu and ‘annointed’ the next governor of Rivers State is false.
The images attached to the post are old photos from 2024.
It is clear that this post was shared to gain engagement and attention.
