Former junior labour minister Festus Keyamo and ex-aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode have earned the reputation of being fake news distributors ahead of Nigeria’s 2023 elections.
The ‘European Union Election Observation Mission NIGERIA 2023 Final Report’ included Messrs Keyamo and Fani-Kayode among those who spread fake news before and during the 2023 general elections.
“There was an increased incidence of misleading information in the days leading up to and during the election. In many cases, false reports were spread by well-known personalities associated with political parties,” stated the EU report released on Tuesday.
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The EU observers’ report noted occasions where Mr Keyamo and Mr Fani-Kayode, who were spokespersons for then-presidential candidate Bola Tinubu’s campaign team, spread bogus news while campaigning for their candidate.
“On 12 February, Festus Keyamo from APC promoted information published by a suspicious website, accusing Peter Obi of bribery. The story quickly became viral and was in few hours debunked,” the report noted.
According to the Peoples Gazette, Mr Keyamo misrepresented the turnout of supporters for Mr Tinubu’s campaign event in Sokoto by circulating photographs of a Chicago festival.
It added, “Femi Fani-Kayode, a former minister of aviation and an APC party member, made a claim on February 11, 2023, that the PDP presidential candidate Abubakar had a secret meeting with serving military generals in Abuja.”
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The EU observers stated, “He accused Atiku of wanting to incite chaos, provoke a coup d’état, and establish a new and unconstitutional order. Kayode posted this claim across multiple social media platforms, and it garnered 281.2k total impressions. The next day, he posted that the Army denied reports about a meeting between its officers and Atiku.”
Reacting to the EU report on Monday, Mr Keyamo said, “All the hoopla over that EU report is neither here nor there when it comes to legitimising or delegitimising the government of the day. That power or responsibility belongs to the judiciary.”
The EU observers refuted assertions that the general elections in 2023 were free, fair, and genuine, regretting the deaths of 74 people and chastising Nigerian police for hitting journalists while ignoring political thugs interrupting the polls.
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