Mustapha Lawal
Claim
A Twitter user claimed an IPOB terrorist attempted to hijack an Ibom Air plane yesterday.
Verdict
No! The claim is Misleading! The picture attached to the tweet was from a video of a yet-to-be-identified man who engaged in unruly behaviour, calling that the president-elect Bola Tinubu should not be sworn in. FactCheckElection can find no link between the incident and IPOB.
Full Text
A Twitter user ‘Ayekoto’ with the username (@DeeOneAyekoto) claimed that a man arrested on Ibom air on 31st March 2023 is an IPOB terrorist who attempted to hijack the commercial plane scheduled to fly from Abuja to Lagos.
He tweeted a picture and wrote the following as a caption:
“The IPOB terrorist who attempted to hijack a commercial plane Ibom air scheduled to fly from Abuja to Lagos.
SAY NO TO IPOB TERRORIST ORGANISATION”
The tweet has garnered over 71k reactions, 230 comments, 327 retweets and 1,117 likes as of the time of this report.
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is a nationalist separatist group in Nigeria deemed a terrorist organization by the Nigerian government in 2017 under the Nigerian Terrorism Act.
Verification
Checks by FactCheckElections revealed that the picture in the tweet was from a Video of a yet-to-be-identified man on an Ibom aircraft bound Abuja from Lagos on Friday evening. The video surfaced on Twitter via (@chrisbamidele) around 10:52 pm, yesterday 31st March 2023.
An official statement by Ibom Air on its official Twitter page described the video as an unruly passenger incident. the statement, which states that “a passenger stood up and began addressing other passengers in a manner considered inappropriate and unruly, as he was making other passengers nervous” can be found here.
According to a report published by Punch, the middle-aged man is a lone protester who was said to have announced that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, must never be sworn in as President on May 29. Premium Times reported security officials had to evacuate the man from the aircraft for “security reasons”.
FactCheckElections can find no link whatsoever between the video where the picture was taken and IPOB.
Conclusion
No! The claim is Misleading! The picture attached to the tweet was from a video of a yet-to-be-identified man who engaged in unruly behaviour, calling that the president-elect Bola Tinubu should not be sworn in. FactCheckElections can find no link between the incident and IPOB