FACT CHECK: Did a boy commit suicide because Peter Obi lost presidential election?

CLAIM: It is being circulated on Twitter that a 19-year-old boy in Plateau State committed suicide by hanging himself because the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, lost the February 25 presidential election.

VERDICT: False!

FULL TEXT

The claim started circulating on Thursday, about 24 hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission declared the candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Bola Tinubu, winner of the election.

There are protests on social media where many people are accusing the electoral umpire and the ruling party of manipulating the results of the election.

The post which has been reposted and retweeted over a thousand times, read:

“BREAKING!!!! ‘I will tell God @inecnigeria killed me’. Young boy from Plateau State commits suicide wen he realized Obi has been rigged out of d just concluded election.D 19 year old boy left a short note behind which reads “no hope for Nigeria for again “. INEC killed dis guy!”

READ ALSO:FACT CHECK: Is this a video of APC thugs shooting armless voters as alleged by LP, PDP?

The posters attached the picture of a young man dangling under a rope.

VERIFICATION

Ripples Nigeria subjected the image to a reverse search, and found that it is an old picture and has been on the internet for close to a decade.

The picture appeared in a 2016 post on nairaland, identifying the person as a Yahoo boy who committed suicide on the eve of the 2016 Christmas Day.

CONCLUSION

The claim that someone committed suicide because Obi was allegedly rigged out of the presidential election is false. The picture is an old one sourced from the internet.

By Oluwatobi Odeyinka

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