By Fridah Okachi
A video posted on YouTube claiming to show Niger Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou lecturing President William Ruto during Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit is fabricated.
In the video, a voice purported to be of Mahamadou is heard dressing down President Ruto over the 2022 presidential election results outcome.
“I want you to go back to your country and fix your country. The leader of the opposition is crying hard that you stole his votes, go back to your country and fix your country. Peace in your country is more powerful than this summit of feeding Africa.
“The person who is supposed to be the president now is lamenting back in Kenya, even if you frown at me, I can hear you, and you are listening to church songs with your earphones. Just go back to your country,” the voice in the video we are debunking said in part.
On 28 January 2023 President Ruto attended the Dakar 2 summit where he held meetings with continental leaders and called for more collective effort in a bid to boost food security in the continent.
Mtaani Radio fact-check desk looked into the video and established that it is not authentic as the audio is not in sync with the speakers. For example, there are instances when the audio kept playing while the speaker had actually paused.
Additionally, we performed a keyword search on YouTube and got a full video of the Dakar 2 deliberations as published by the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).
Browsing through the video, we established that the clip we are debunking was extracted from the original video starting from 03:58:57.
In the original video, Niger Prime Minister addresses an initiative dubbed 3 N (Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens) and does not make the remarks in the clip we are debunking.
Additionally, the voice in the video we are debunking is different from that of the Niger Prime Minister and the translator in the original video.
In view of the above, we concluded that the video is manipulated.
This fact check was published by Mtaani Radio with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-CheckingAlliance.
