Back to Africa Check

No, Kenya’s president didn’t tell people wanting to impeach deputy to ‘back down’

A Facebook user has posted a screenshot of a tweet that seems to be from Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta.

In the tweet, the president apparently urges people who want to remove deputy president William Ruto to “back down”. 

It reads: “Absolutely no in wars between me and my DP @WilliamsRuto. I urge those calling on his removal to back down. Building new bridges is not about burning the older ones.” 

The screenshot is captioned: “Isn’t this the Kenya we want???”

The deputy president’s office has been linked to a fake military tender involving billions of shillings. Allies of the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, have threatened to impeach Ruto over the scandal. 



Tweet traced to parody account


Kenyatta no longer has personal social media accounts. His Facebook and Twitter pages were deactivated more than a year ago, on 22 March 2019. At the time, his chief of staff, Nzoika Waita, said this was because of unauthorised access.

Any Twitter communications from the president are made through the official State House Kenya account. The tweet shared on Facebook was not from the State House account.

A search for the tweet reveals that it came from a parody Twitter account, which has since been suspended for violating the “Twitter rules”.  – Dancan Bwire




 

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

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 guide

Africa 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

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.