Oluwaseye Ogunsanya
Claim
Scooper, an online news platform, reported that Donatus Matthew, Labour Party’s House of Representatives candidate for Kaura Constituency, Kaduna who was recently declared by INEC as the winner of the election is a bike (okada) rider.
Verdict
Misleading!
Full Text
Scooper, an online news platform, reported that Donatus Matthew, Labour Party’s House of Representatives candidate for Kaura Constituency, Kaduna who was recently declared by INEC as the winner of the election is a bike (okada) rider.
The report stated that: “Matthew who is an Okada rider is the first LP candidate to win a legislative seat in the 2023 Reps election”
The returning officer, Elijah Ella announced that Matthew polled a total of 10,508 votes to defeat Gwani, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 10,297 votes.
The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 9,919 votes, while the flagbearer of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), secured 5,354 votes.
Verification
To investigate the claim FactCheckElections did a Google search, we found out a report by ICIR announcing Donatus Mathew’s win.
According to the report with the headline: ‘Election: Ex-commercial motorcyclist floors House Minority Whip’ Mathew, a former commercial motorcyclist, defeated the incumbent House of Representatives Minority Whip and four-term member, Gideon Gwani.
Quoting a resident of the area, the report stated that he resorted to working as a commercial motorcyclist after his tenure as a Councilor.
“Mathew didn’t do many campaigns, he has few posters and he was once a councillor during the Makarfi era, but later things went bad for him. He picked up Okada business. Today he’s going to the Federal House of Representatives. This is what Labour Party represents. It’s a party for all, no preferential treatment,”
Conclusion
FactCheckElections can conclude that Donatus Mathew is not an okada rider as claimed by the report but was an ex okada rider.