A Twitter post with an image of a man whose trousers appear to be torn, exposing his legs and which identifies him as Robert Alai, a Kenyan blogger, is FALSE.

The post claims the photo, which shows the man walking beside a police officer, represents the state under which Alai was arrested in Kano, Kisumu County.

It is accompanied by the caption, “Robert Alai arrested after being caught running naked in Kano”.

Similar posts have also been shared on Facebook, as seen here, here and here.

A reverse image search on Tineye.com, however, reveals that the image has been online since 25 March 2021.

A further look through Google’s reverse image search accompanied by keywords ‘by-election agent Matungu Kakamega’ reveals that the image was taken on 4 March 2021, during the by-election held in Matungu, Kakamega County.

Online publication Kenyans.co.ke reported that an election agent was stripped by angry residents after he was accused of voter bribery during the Matungu by-election, which was corroborated by an article on TV47’s website, which ran with the image.

The Matungu poll was marred by chaos and voter irregularities as evidenced by local broadcaster Citizen TV, here.

The by-election had 15 candidates contesting the seat that fell vacant following the death of member of parliament Justus Murunga on 14 November 2020. Among the candidates were the late Murunga’s widow, Christabel Amunga and son Eugene Ambwere.

PesaCheck has looked into a Twitter post claiming the image of a man whose trousers are torn and exposing his legs is blogger Robert Alai, following his arrest in Kano, Kisumu County and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Cynthia Kanyali and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.