Tijani Abdulkabeer
Claim
The Presidential Candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, stated that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the Presidential Candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress slept through the second accord meeting and didn’t utter any word.
Verdict
There is no substantial evidence backing the claim that Tinubu slept through the second peace accord meeting held by the National Peace Committee for Presidential Candidates. This tweet is misleading.
Full Text
Tinubu and Sowore were among the presidential candidates who attended the meeting that the National Peace Committee under the leadership of Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd) organised in Abuja on Friday.
The one-day roundtable meeting, according to Abdulsalami, was to ensure proper behaviour of the candidates, their parties, and other important stakeholders, ahead of the February elections.
However, hours after the meeting, Sowore tweeted that Tinubu made no contribution, adding that it was the National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, Mallam Adamu Abdullahi, that spoke on his behalf.
This tweet has since generated diverse opinions; while some believed the claim, many others expressed their scepticism. At the time FactCheckElections obtained the tweet, it had generated 14,500,000 likes, 8,490 retweets and 2,792 comments.
We just returned from a meeting of party leaders/Presidential candidates with the national peace committee in Abuja, the Presidential candidate of The @OfficialAPCNg @officialABAT slept through the meeting, he didn’t say a word. His party chair spoke on his behalf pic.twitter.com/btMsOQYdT6
— Omoyele Sowore (@YeleSowore) January 20, 2023
Verification
In his tweet, FactCheckElections noticed that the claimant used the phrase “slept through the meeting. He didn’t say a word” to mean that Tinubu did not participate at all in the meeting using a blur picture that shows the APC candidate dozed off during the meeting.
He also did not state the number of hours that the meeting lasted for or shared any video and as at the time FactCheckElections is checking, TV360, a subsidiary of TVC news are the only reliable platform that has published a 4:01 seconds & 1:53 seconds video clips of the meeting, making his tweet a conjecture at best.
Earlier during the meeting, PUNCH Newspaper reported that Sowore created a scene by protesting over the sitting arrangement, threatening to remain standing or walk out on the committee and other candidates present. Abdulsalami who assured that his position is noted, however, advised that he leaves if he was not still satisfied.
A poke through Google search to check if this was the case of an isolated claim returned some interesting results. For instance, around the time the tweet was shared, credible media and blogs like Daily Trust, Tribune Online, Pulse Nigeria, Sahara Reporters, distributing the claim all over the search engine as a news report. There is no evidence to back this.
Conclusion
There is no substantial evidence backing the claim that Tinubu slept through the second peace accord meeting held by the National Peace Committee for Presidential Candidates. This tweet is misleading.