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No evidence Kenyan electoral commission official said Kenyan politician Odinga dictated Homa Bay county governorship results

IN SHORT: Months after the Kenyan elections, fabricated claims and quotes are still circulating on social media. A quote attributed to an Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission official about Raila Odinga interfering in county election results is one of these. 

A screenshot of what looks like a tweet by Pulse Live Kenya, a news website in Kenya, has been posted on Facebook.

RailaIEBC Meta Check

The tweet posts a controversial quote. It claims an electoral commission official said that the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga influenced Homa Bay county governorship results in favour of Gladys Wanga, an ODM politician.

“RAILA Called me three times to declare Hon. Glady’s Wanga as the the Governor elect. – Frederick Ochieng Apopa (Homa bay County IEBC Returning Officer),” the tweet reads.

Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) declared Wanga the winner of the governorship elections in August 2022. Apopa is the electoral commission's official in the county.

Her closest competitor, Evans Kidero, rejected the results and challenged it in court. The case is ongoing at time of writing.

The screenshot and the texts with the claim have been posted here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

But did Apopa accuse presidential-hopeful Odinga of trying to interfere with county election results? We checked.

Digitally manipulated screenshot

There are clues that the screenshot has been manipulated.

The text in the screenshot has glaring errors that would not be common for a reputable media company such as Pulse Live Kenya. For example, the words “RAILA Called me” have carelessly placed capital and lower-case letters. The word “the” has also been repeated.

We found no results when we did an advanced Twitter search for the tweet and we couldn’t find the tweet on Pulse Live Kenya’s Twitter account.

Africa Check reached out to the director of content at Pulse Live Kenya, Judysheila Mugo, and asked if the screenshot was legit.

“This was not from us since our Twitter account is not verified. So the screenshot is not authentic,” she told us.

There is no evidence Pulse Live Kenya tweeted this or that Apopa made this claim.

 

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