By Eric Elezuo
The European Union has mentioned two known Nigerians as some of those, who peddled fake news before and after the February 25 presidential and March 18 governorship elections held in 2023 in its final report of the 2023 general elections, titled ‘European Union Election Observation Mission NIGERIA 2023 Final Report’.
The Union, in the final report of the assessment of the 2023 general elections, recognised the duo of Femi Fani-Kayode and Festus Keyamo as having at one time or another released claims in the public spaces, which were found to be false.
Fani-Kayode and Keyamo, who are members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), were spokespersons for then-presidential candidate of the party, Bola Tinubu’s campaign team, the EU observers’ report cited instances where the duo dished out fake news as they campaigned for their candidate.
In page 92 of the report, the EU noted that “Femi Fani-Kayode, a former minister of aviation and an APC party member, made a claim on February 11, 2023, that the PDP presidential candidate Abubakar had a secret meeting with serving military generals in Abuja.
“He accused Atiku of wanting to incite chaos, provoke a coup d’état, and establish a new and unconstitutional order. Kayode posted this claim across multiple social media platforms, and it garnered 281.2k total impressions. The next day, he posted that the Army denied reports about a meeting between its officers and Atiku.”
Stating why Keyamo, who is a senior advocate of Nigeria, was mentioned, the EU report, revealed that “On 12 February, Festus Keyamo from APC promoted information published by a suspicious website, accusing Peter Obi of bribery. The story quickly became viral and was in few hours debunked.”
The EU observers report discredited the 2023 general elections, saying it was far from free, fair and credible. It also lamented the killing of 74 people, and berated the Nigerian police for attacking journalists while ignoring political thugs disrupting the polls.
Keyamo was a junior minister of the Labour and Productivity ministry in the immediate past administration while Fani-Kayode defected to the APC in the build up to the 2023 presidential election.
