Claim: A Twitter user claimed that the rainfall in Ekiti on Friday, March March 3, 2023 occurred in Anambra when Peter Obi was the Governor of the state.
Verdict: FALSE
Full Text
A Twitter user, Iloh Francisca on March 5, 2023, tweeted that some pictures were from rainstorm incidents that rocked Anambra when Peter Obi was the Governor of the state.
Francisca’s tweet was a response to a set of pictures posted by the Punch Newspapers, one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers. The Punch captioned the picture with the description “PHOTOS: Rainstorm Destroys Houses In Ekiti.
“No fewer than 105 buildings were destroyed by a rainstorm at Oke-Ako in the Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State on Friday evening.”
However, in her response to the tweet, Francisca said “This rainstorm happened in Anambra State when Peter Obi was governor. Man helped most people to recover from their lost. It’s climate change.”
This rainstorm happened in Anambra State when Peter Obi was governor. Man helped most people to recover from their lost. It’s climate change.
— Iloh Francisca (@ugochiiloh1) March 5, 2023
Verification
To verify Francisca’s claim, a reverse image search was conducted on the four pictures that the Punch Newspapers tweeted, but none of them had appeared on the internet before.
Using TinEye, Yandex, and Google Lens, all the images that popped up did not relate to the pictures that Francisca claimed to have been rainstorm that occurred during Peter Obi’s term as the Anambra State Governor, supposedly sometime between 2007 to 2014.
The Punch Newspaper that originally tweeted the pictures also referenced the source, an indication of the true time the incident occurred.
Also, a resident of Oke-Ako in the Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State confirmed the incident.
Adeyemi Oluwatosin, a resident of Isaban town in Ikole-Ekiti, a community close to Oke Ao where the rainstorm occurred, in an interview with BONews Service, confirmed that the pictures were from the rainstorm that occurred in Oke-Afo on Friday, March 3, 2023.
Meanwhile, the Nations Newspaper also reported the same incident, with the account of victims.
Conclusion
The claim that the Ekiti rainstorm which led to the destruction of over 105 buildings occurred in Anambra during Peter Obi’s term as the State Governor is FALSE. Though there were flooding incidents in Anambra during the administration of Peter Obi, the specific pictures being referred to did not emanate from Anambra State.
This fact-check was produced by BONews Service with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, International Fact-Checking Network, and African Fact-Checking Alliance network.