By Raji Rasaki
Claim: An X user, @tonyajah posted a video that suggested purported campaign promises by President Bola Tinubu to “reduce the purchasing power of the people,” “slow down the economy,” and “widen the tax net.”
Verdict: Misleading. The video was taken out of context as the event occurred in 2019, not 2023 when President Tinubu was campaigning for the presidency.
Our checks reveal the viral video showing purported Tinubu’s campaign promises was edited to change the narratives.
Full Text
Following the announcement of the new fuel pump price by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), an X user, Tony Ajah (@tonyajah) posted a video suggesting purported campaign promises by President Bola Tinubu to “reduce the purchasing power of the people”, “slow down the economy” and “widen the tax net.”
For some weeks now, Nigerians have endured long hours of queues at filling stations due to scarcity of fuel
This post, currently trending on social media, particularly on X as of Sep.16, 2024, has generated over 22,000 views with most responses eliciting anger and disappointment amidst the high rate of inflation, hunger, and other negative economic indices in the country occasioned by the twin policies of oil subsidy removal and floating of the naira by the president upon assumption of office in 2023.
Reacting to this video, X user, Senior Advocate of #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria (@ugo_ejike) wrote: “The old man sick which made him momentarily senile and prone to spilling the beans. He didn’t say those things consciously”
Another X user, The Alade Christoph (@Chrisdbeloved_) remarked: “Shey bi everyone was stupidly listening to this abi and were shouting renew hope, like nobody has sense or brain to analyze his speech. Let’s continue now.”
However, an X user, Green Energy (@Olaqeem) seemed to have a different interpretation of the statement made in the video: “If we reduce the purchasing power of the people” {by increasing the Tax rate} “we can FURTHER slowdown the purchasing power of the people”. {which is already low undesirably, but instead} “let’s widen the Tax net”. {subscribe more people that are taxable into paying taxes}.”
While the downsides of the president’s reforms have truly been characterised by “reduced purchasing powers, slow economy, and widening tax net”, were there any campaign promises that Tinubu would reduce the purchasing powers of the people, slow down the economy and or widen the tax net?
The need to know and clarify these prompted us to verify.
Verification
When we subjected the viral video to Google Reverse Image, the result showed it was first published on Nairaland in Feb. 2023, on X by @meg_Ola_Essien in June 2023, on TikTok by bonfire_t in July 2023 and reshared in Nov. 2023 by an X user, SpotlightAbby following an interview granted by Mr. Peter Obi on AriseTv on the issues around taxation.
We discovered the post has also been shared on Facebook here and here.
Upon further verification, we were led to the full version of the video on YouTube.
A careful analysis of the video revealed that while the full version was one minute 26 seconds, the viral video was 36 seconds suggesting it had been edited.
When was the original video uploaded?
When the video was further subjected to advanced verification through the InVID Verification Plugin, the video analysis showed that the original version was uploaded in July 2022, way before the 2023 electoral campaigns started.
Screenshot of the analysis obtained from InVID Verification Plugin
An observation of the original video revealed that the event commemorated Bola Tinubu’s 11th Colloquium. When we searched further to check if any credible news medium published the story, we found the full speech delivered by Bola Tinubu in March 2019 published by Television Continental News.
Screenshot of the original video retrieved from YouTube.
When we explored Google auto-transcription, we observed that the original video was edited to only 26 minutes where the word ‘IF’ was removed to suggest that Tinubu was insinuating the purported campaign promises. Results show Tinubu was only advising the government of President Mohammadu Buhari.
Screenshots of the video transcription were retrieved from YouTube.
Conclusion
Checks reveal that the viral video showing purported Tinubu’s campaign promises was edited to change the narratives. The original video was from Tinubu’s 11th Colloquium in 2019 not in 2023 when he was campaigning for the presidency. Again, checks reveal he was not campaigning as claimed in the video, he was only advising the then government.
