An image of a dog lifting its leg against a vehicle with the face of Raila Odinga, leader of Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement opposition party, painted on the side has gone viral on Facebook.
“BAD omen!” reads one caption to the photo. “A dog urinating on a vehicle purportedly donated to Raila Odinga for his campaign. The curse is real!”
Another user said: “Immediately after receiving these vehicles as donations for his presidential campaign, a dog from nowhere did this.”
The image has been posted on Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of followers.
It appeared online soon after Odinga received campaign vehicles from supporters of his presidential bid. Kenya is set to hold elections in August 2022.
But does the image show a real incident? We checked.
Dog peeing on fence
A reverse image search of the image reveals that it was first published online on 1 October 2021. It appears in a news report on the donated campaign vehicles. But in the original, no dog can be seen.
A Google image search using the keywords “dog peeing” led us to a photo of the same dog lifting its leg against a wooden fence.
The dog was photoshopped onto the photo of the campaign vehicle. The image is fake.
Republish our content for free
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
Add new comment