FACT-Check: Festus Keyamo Share Misleading Picture Of APC Rally In Sokoto

By Ogar Monday

Claim: Festus Keyamo, a spokesperson of the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential campaign council, posted an image on Twitter, claiming that the crowd in the image was from the APC’s presidential campaign in Sokoto.

Verdict: The image used in Mr. Keyamo’s tweet was deliberately distorted and taken out of its original context to mislead the public. The image was originally taken at the Lollapalooza, Chicago, USA festival in 2021, not in Sokoto, Nigeria, during the APC rally. The claim is false.

***Keyamo’s tweet with the picture highlighted in blue.***

Full Text

As campaigns towards the general elections intensify, the use of crowds at political campaigns to show political prowess continues among actors and supporters of the top political parties.

On Thursday, February 9, 2023, Barrister Festus Keyamo, Nigeria’s Junior Minister of Labour and a spokesperson for the Tinubu/Shettma campaigns, shared a tweet with images purportedly from the All Progressive Congress (APC) presidential rally in Sokoto State earlier that day.

Mr. Keyamo shared the image from his official Twitter handle @fkeyamo with the caption:

“More pictures from the mother of all rallies in Sokoto! The signs are all there for all to see! But they are playing! Make dem dey play!! In about a forth-night, the jungle will mature.”

One of the photos that depicted a huge crowd of shirtless people seemed to draw more attention than the rest. One user called out the image for being fake. Sound Jay (@sound_jay6) argued that the said image with shirtless people was fake. “fake picture mate,” he challenged.

However, in a concession to the alleged narrative, Ketura (@ketura16647548) also wrote:

“Jungle don fully matured oh na human being be dis. Jagaban we know Jagaban we vote. Sai ka shiga villa.”

The tweet has been viewed over 280K times, with over 1,654 likes and over 346 retweets. As the election date draws near, political actors are getting more desperate, which can sometimes push them to share contentious content worthy of verification.

Verification

CrossRiverWatch ran a Tin Eye reverse image search to verify the integrity of the picture. Interestingly, the analysis revealed the alleged image was originally shared by Colin Hinkle (@hinklecolin) on Twitter and dated back to July 31, 2021, when he tagged @Lollapalooza, a music festival that is held in Chicago.

***Image 1: A screenshot of the image shared by Mr. Keyamo, the same encircled part is seen in image 2 shared, originally shared by Mr. Hinkle on his Twitter page.***

***Image 2: A screenshot of the image originally shared by Mr. Hinkle. The same encircled parts are seen in image 1, Mr. Keyamo’s purported depiction of the APC rally in Sokoto.***

The image was also a subject of an article on Business Insider Africa titled:“A photo showing the mostly maskless crowd at Lollapalooza 2021 is being compared to Where’s Waldo.”

***Image 3: A screenshot of the article on Business Insider Africa referencing the image.***

CrossRiverWatch also found that this is not the first time this image has been used to mislead the public. A Nigerian blogging site, Naijaloaded, in one of its posts titled: “Ronaldo To Real Madrid or Messi To PSG – Which Of These Is The Biggest Transfer To Happen In Sporting History?” claimed the image was of the fans who came out in Paris to witness the arrival of the Argentina footballer Lionel Messi’s arrival to Paris Saint Germain.

Forensic Analysis Of The Two Images

To further verify the alleged image and the original version, CrossRiverWatch conducted a forensic analysis of the two images, subjecting both versions to noise analysis to determine the level of distortion on the alleged image. Results from the analysis, conducted on the same ratings (encircled red), revealed Mr. Keyamo’s version (image 4) was deliberately subjected to noise distortion to reduce the quality of the image, hence the quality of visibility.

Image 4: A screenshot of the version shared by Mr. Keyamo. Based on the same noise analysis scale as image five below, findings show that Mr. Keyamo’s version of the image was distorted (take note of the difference).

Image 5: the version of the image shared in the article. When subjected to the same noise level analysis, results show the image has not been tampered with. A clear difference with Mr. Keyamo’s version is evident.

The Lollapalooza Festival

The Lollapalooza festival is an annual four-day music festival that features artists from different genres of music and is hosted in Grand Park, Chicago, USA.

The event which started in 1999 is considered one of the biggest music festivals in the world and has had appearances from Snoop Doggy Dogg, the Prodigy, Kanye West, K’naan, J. Cole, Dua Lipa, amongst others.

Conclusion

The image used in Mr. Keyamo’s tweet was deliberately distorted and taken out of its original context to mislead the public. The image was originally taken at the Lollapalooza festival in 2021. The claim is false.

The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame KariKari Fellowship partnership with CrossRiverWatch to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.