This video showing a crowd chanting ‘Ruto’, referring to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s political opponent, Deputy President William Ruto has been making rounds. The crowd appears to call out the deputy president’s name while disrupting Mr Odinga’s speech.
The video circulated on WhatsApp and was also published on YouTube by the Kenya News Channel, who in their title claimed; ‘Raila heckled badly by Ruto supporters in Nanyuki, Laikipia‘.
Background
Politically charged misinformation seems to become more popular as the 2022 elections draw closer. Such is evident in a recent Piga Firimbi fact-check that debunked a fake opinion poll that supposedly found that Julius Bitok is the leading gubernatorial candidate for Uasin Gishu county.
On Africa Uncensored’s feature analyzing Uganda’s last general elections here, it is evident that political opponents can use social media to spread misinformation about their rival parties. Kenya’s burgeoning use of social media to sway political opinions can already be felt as revealed in this feature titled ‘Kenya’s Keyboard Warriors‘.
Verification
On September 25, 2021 the Orange Democratic Movement Party (ODM) announced that its members, alongside its leader Raila Odinga, would be in the Mt. Kenya region. According to the post on ODM’s official Twitter account, the party’s leader and his entourage were in Nanyuki, Laikipia (part of the Mt. Kenya region) on Sunday, September 26.
Piga Firimbi found that a video identical to that circulating online was posted on ODM’s Twitter account. The video shared on the ODM account however had different audio, where the crowd that surrounded Mr. Odinga did not heckle him or chant the name ‘Ruto’ in disruption.
To identify which video is authentic, Piga Firimbi further searched for Google results on Raila Odinga’s visit to Nanyuki, Laikipia, and found this footage posted on the Nation’s YouTube channel on September 26, 2021. The video by the Nation does not include any heckling or chanting of DP Ruto’s name.
Further proving that the video making rounds online is doctored, footage from this rally was featured on The Standard as well as Citizen TV bulletins and showed that the alleged disruptions did not happen.
Piga Firimbi previously debunked here a similarly doctored video claiming that a crowd in Dandora chanted Sonko’s name while President Uhuru Kenyatta was delivering his speech.
Verdict
Yes, the video claiming to show a crowd chanting DP William Ruto’s name in the middle of Raila Odinga’s speech in Nanyuki, Laikipia is doctored.
This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.
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