BY: Mustapha Lawal
Claim
Peter Obi Calls For War To Be Declared in Nigeria ahead of planned protest
Verdict
False! Peter Obi did not call for war to be declared in Nigeria. Instead, he expressed his support for nationwide protests scheduled for August 1, 2024, endorsing the constitutional right of Nigerians to demonstrate peacefully.
Full-text
Reno Omokri, an activist and former presidential aide claimed that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in Nigeria’s last general election in 2023 called for war to be declared in the country ahead of a planned protest.
Reno posted this claim via his X handle on the 30th of July 2024 with an 18-second video snippet and the caption “Protest: Peter Obi calls for war to be declared in Nigeria”.
The claim was made when a section of Nigerians announced the commencement of a nationwide protest against the economic hardship and system of governance in the country. These groups have adopted #EndBadGovernanceinNigeria on X, amongst other hashtags and social platforms, to publicise the protest.
Reno Omokri has however been against the protest. He has made this known visibly through his social media pages, where he highlights progress and improvement the current administration is making.
Also, the Special Adviser to the Presidency on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga earlier accused supporters of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and some other opposition members to be behind the protest.
“Two years after ENDSARS, the IPOB and the gullible innocents joined the Labour Party in 2022 to support Peter Obi, a sympathizer of their cause. They are the people spreading the hashtags “EndBad Governance”, “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,” Onanuga alleged in a series of tweets.
Peter Obi, however, expressed his support for the nationwide protest scheduled for August. Obi emphasized that such protests are a constitutional right of Nigerian citizens. He urged protesters to ensure their demonstrations remain peaceful and within legal boundaries. Obi identified hunger and hopelessness among the youth as driving factors behind the protest and called on Nigerian authorities to listen attentively to the concerns of the demonstrators.
“Protests are allowed under the Nigerian Constitution,” Obi stated. “My appeal to those participating is to conduct themselves lawfully and civilly, reflecting our commitment to legal norms as a nation.”
FactCheckAfrica decided to work on checking this claim based on the violence tendency it carries at such a critical time as time that the country is battling economic hardship and difficulty. Also, FactCheckAfrica has debunked a series of misleading claims around the protest topic and written an explainer on possible ways misinformation may be wielded as a tool during the protest.
Verification
FactcheckAfrica conducted a reverse image search on keyframes from the video snippet posted and found a longer version (about 17 minutes long) of the video on a YouTube page with the user handle SYMFONI. The video uploaded on 29th July 2024, was the Keynote Speech, Peter Obi delivered at the 6th public lecture of The Board of Follows Pharmaceutical Society Of Nigeria in Awka.
FactCheckAfrica found that at no point in the video did the presidential candidate call for war to be declared. However, he expressed his opinion about the country’s current state and its leadership.
Referring to the leadership, he called for them to avoid the stories and secure the country: “… all the stories we are hearing today, they must secure us if we are at war, let us declare war and everybody knows we are at war, there is nothing wrong with that. We can’t have a country where non-state actors and criminals have taken over and nobody is doing anything,” he said.
FactCheckAfrica found that the content of the snippet video posted by Reno Omokri did not give proper context (which was cut out) to the points that the presidential candidate was making in the video and was taken to misrepresent a call for war to be declared in the country as he claimed in the post.
Conclusion
The claim that Peter Obi called for war to be declared in Nigeria ahead of a planned protest is false. His statements were about securing the country and addressing the actions of non-state actors and criminals, not a literal call for war.
Edited by Habeeb Adisa
