Pictures from the general elections conducted four years ago and 2015 xenophobic attacks in South Africa have been recently shared in support of claims about violence in Kogi and Bayelsa gubernatorial elections, The ICIR has observed.
A report by The Nigerian News, a “citizen’s online publishing and broadcasting platform”, shared on Tuesday made use of a suspicious picture to illustrate alleged thug attacks in Kogi State. (Archived here.)
“Ahead of Kogi November 16th election, the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Natasha Akpoti, and his campaign team have been allegedly beaten up by a suspected team of thugs,” the platform wrote.
“In a yet to be confirmed report, the campaign organisation was attacked at the venue of the INEC Nigeria Stakeholders meeting ahead of the poll.”
The same photo was used on its Twitter account.
However, combining the TinEye reverse image search tool and Google search engine, The ICIR traced the photo back to April 2015 in South Africa, when xenophobic attacks led to the death and displacement of foreigners.
Newsweek, in its caption, explained that the pictures show a man gesturing “with a stick outside a hostel during anti-immigrant violence in Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 17, 2015”. This is according to a news report published the same day.
READ THE FULL REPORT HERE: