By Oluwaseye Ogunsanya
Claim
A Twitter user 99℅ OPPRESSED @Truthfully83 posted a video of the national secretary of the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) Sen. Iyiola Omisore distributing cash to people believed to be voters ahead of today’s election.
Full Text
A Twitter user 99℅ OPPRESSED @Truthfully83 posted a video of the national secretary of the ruling All Progressives Party (APC) Sen. Iyiola Omisore distributing cash to people believed to be voters ahead of today’s election.
This video which was captioned “APC at work in Osun state. 2k each. Iyola Omisore, APC National Secretary. Iyola Omisore is from Osun state. Go and verify” comes just a few hours before the commencement of the Osun state gubernatorial election.
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Although, it was adjudged to be an old video here and here posted in 2014 when Omisore was contesting for governor in Osun state under the platform of People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
It has been shared by other users to advance the narrative that he is distributing cash ahead of today’s election here and here.
Verdict
The video is misleading. It was not from 2014, although he was indeed distributing cash gifts, he was merely doing it as a guest at an annual widows’ empowerment event in 2018 and not for political campaign purpose or ahead of today’s governorship election.
Verification
Was The Video From 2014?
Checks by FactCheckElection on YouTube reveals that the video was not from 2014 when Omisore was contesting for the state governorship election as claimed by many.
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Our search on google took us to YouTube which shows that the video was first uploaded on January 9 2018 by Sahara TV with the caption “Vote-Buying Guru, Former Sen Omisore Distributing Cash In Anticipation Of Winning Election In 2018”. The same video was posted on their Twitter page on the same date here
Another result of the search on YouTube shows that the video was also uploaded on January 14, 2018 by one John Adegbola.
The third result which was uploaded by Ahmed Mustafa also shows that 67 the video was uploaded on January 8 2018 with the caption “Omisore Distributing Money, Materials To People To Woo Them For 2018???”
Having established the fact that the video was not from 2014 but 2018, the question to answer is whether or not he distributed the cash ahead of today’s election.
To answer the above question, further google search revealed that the video making the rounds was cutout from an original video uploaded on Kings International Christian Center (KICC) YouTube page on January 7 2018.
The video was the highlight of an initiative of the founder of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC), Matthew Ashimolowo, and his wife Yemisi which seeks to empower widow through the donation of food, cloth, and cash.
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The 2018 edition which was the 12th year of the empowerment programme took place on Saturday, January 6, 2018 and it saw about 17,000 widows benefit from the initiative.
Senator Iyiola Omisore who was the governorship candidate of Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2018 Osun State gubernatorial election happen to be one of the guest at the event and he partook in distributing cash gifts to the beneficiaries as seen in the video.
As a result of the foregoing it is safe to conclude that the video was not from 2014 although he was indeed distributing cash gifts, he was merely doing it as a guest at the annual widows’ empowerment event in 2018 and not for political campaign purpose or ahead of today’s governorship election.