IN SHORT: A photo of Nigeria’s works minister, Babatunde Fashola, has been posted on social media with the claim he’s shown viewing the electoral commission’s server, before election results became available. But looking just a little closer proves this to be false.
An image is being circulated on Facebook and Twitter with the claim that Babatunde Fashola, Nigeria's minister for works and housing, has had access to a server that hosts election results.
"Someone please ask Fashola how he got access to this server that has the election result data. INEC and APC rigged the election even before it started. They should come out and defend this," one of the tweets reads.
The photo shows Fashola sitting in front of a computer screen, apparently viewing an election result dashboard.
Nigeria held its presidential election on Saturday 23 February 2023. On 1 March the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) declared Bola Tinubu, the candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress, the winner of the presidential election.
A screenshot of the tweet has also been shared on Facebook, such as here and here.
Is it true that a government minister had access to election results before they became publicly available? We checked.
Fashola not viewing Inec server
A closer look at the laptop screen in the photo shows that the website is headed “Civichive” and looks quite different to the Inec election results website.
A Google search reveals that Civic Hive is a non-governmental organisation that has a dashboard monitoring the results of Nigeria’s 2023 general election.
The Civic Hive presidential election dashboard appears to be the one in the photo circulating on social media. There is nothing suspicious about Fashola having visited or viewed this site.
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