PesaCheck reached out to the Kajiado East MP who clarified that her official Twitter account is @PerisTobiko.
Syndicated Story By PesaCheck.
This Twitter account purporting to belong to Kajiado East Member of Parliament Peris Tobiko is FAKE.
The account claims that Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto “bribed the International Court of Justice (ICJ)” to rule against his country.
The post does not explicitly indicate what the ruling is, but comes days after the ICJ ruled mostly in favour of Somalia over a disputed maritime border with Kenya.
“Ruto used millions of money to bribe ICJ Judges who sit in the Hague Court to rule in favour of our neighbours Somalia, Ruto is to blame… ~ Kieleweke, ODM, KANU & OKA,” the tweet reads.
In October 2021, Tobiko announced she would run for the Kajiado gubernatorial seat in the 2022 general elections on a United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Party ticket. Ruto is affiliated with the UDA party, making the alleged remarks against her party boss questionable.
The Twitter account has also shared other questionable tweets, as seen here, here, and here.
The legislator has also flagged the Twitter account as an imposter. On 12 October 2021, Tobiko warned online users not to take the tweets from that account seriously as it is a fake.
“Ignore all tweets from the fake Twitter page that has a zero where my name has a letter o. This is my only Twitter page and all messages shared on my Twitter are also verified on my official Facebook page,” the legislator wrote on her official Twitter account.
PesaCheck also reached out to Tobiko and confirmed that the Twitter account we are fact-checking is fake.
“My only Twitter account is @PerisTobiko spelled the same way my name is with an ‘o’ and not a zero. My account joined Twitter in June 2012 (this is in the Twitter bio) and currently has 3466 followers,” Tobiko told this fact-checker in a message.
She added that a link to her Twitter account is available on her Instagram account as well, even as she works on getting her accounts verified.
The real and fake Tobiko accounts have the same username. The only difference is the fake Twitter handle has a zero at the end instead of letter ‘O’ and the letter ‘T’ is not capitalised.
The real Tobiko account was created in June 2012, and the imposter one in August 2021. By the time of writing this fact-check, Tobiko’s legitimate account had 3,466 followers, whereas the fake one had 367 followers.
PesaCheck has looked into a Twitter account purporting to belong to Kajiado East Member of Parliament Peris Tobiko claiming that Deputy President William Ruto used millions to bribe the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 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 Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck 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.