The director of communication in the Office of the Deputy President has dismissed the quote as “nonsense”.
Syndicated Story By PesaCheck.
A quote shared on Twitter attributed to Kenya’s Deputy President (DP) William Ruto commenting on the Kenya-Somalia maritime border dispute ruling is FAKE.
In the quote, the DP extends gratitude to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its ruling over the 38,000 sq miles (100,000 sq km) dispute and asks Kenyans to accept it.
“We thank the ICJ for finally delivering Justice on the Kenya vs Somalia maritime case. I urge Kenyans to accept the verdict and move on for the sake of peace and good neighborliness,” reads the quote which is undated.
A poster with Ruto’s photo contains the quote.
“The Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya, out of his hatred for the President, thanks the ICJ for handing Somalia our territory. Such people should never be allowed to lead this country,” the tweet adds.
In its ruling on 12 October 2021, the ICJ found no maritime boundary between Kenya and Somalia. It went ahead to draw a different border from the one claimed by both neighbours.
The ruling appeared to please Somalia, given this tweet by the country’s Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Osman Dubbe. However, President Uhuru Kenyatta slammed the UN court, calling its decision “clearly erroneous.”
While the president and his deputy have appeared to be opposed on some political issues, there is no publicly available record of Ruto pronouncing himself on the ICJ ruling, or taking a different stance from his boss.
For instance, the quote is not on Ruto’s Facebook and Twitter timeline, where he routinely comments about topical issues.
A statement of this nature would have attracted widespread attention in both the local and international media, which is not the case.
When PesaCheck sought comment from the Deputy President’s office, the director of communications, Emmanuel Talam, dismissed the quote as “nonsense”.
PesaCheck has looked into the quote shared on Twitter attributed to Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto commenting on the court ruling on the Kenya-Somalia maritime border dispute, and finds it to be FAKE.
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 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 Simon Muli 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.
