IN SHORT: There have been no news reports or announcements that Larry Ellison, head of the Oracle software company, has donated US$1 million to Nigerian presidential candidate Peter Obi’s campaign, which would have been illegal. And Obi has denied receiving the donation.
“American billionaire ‘Larry Ellison’ donates 1m$ to ‘Peter Obi’ Presidential campaign, offers to build ‘Plane Manufacturing Company’ in Nigeria if Peter Obi wins,” reads a message circulating on Facebook in September 2022.
Obi is the Labour Party candidate in Nigeria’s upcoming presidential election, slated for February 2023.
Ellison is a US businessperson and the co-founder and chief executive of Oracle, a software company.
Nigeria’s electoral law prohibits political candidates from accepting foreign donations to fund election campaigns.
But has Ellison donated US$1 million to Obi’s campaign and offered to set up an aircraft manufacturing company in Nigeria if he wins the presidency? We checked.
No evidence of donation
There are no details in the Facebook post of where and when Ellison made the offer. An absence of details is often a red flag that a claim on social media is false.
We searched for news reports of the donation in mainstream US and Nigerian media and found nothing. If it were true, it would have been widely covered.
And we found no announcement of the donation on Ellison’s verified Twitter account. His first and only tweet was in June 2012.
And Obi has denied that the US billionaire is bankrolling his campaign.
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