A message posted on Facebook in Nigeria listed 10 names that it said were disqualified presidential aspirants in Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress or APC.
Its headline reads: “10 DISQUALIFIED APC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. - Chidi Cali.” We found similar claims circulating on Facebook here and here.
The screening of candidates wanting to run for president on the APC ticket in Nigeria’s 2023 general elections was held on 30 and 31 May 2022.
The presidential primaries were held in the capital Abuja on 7 and 8 June, and all 23 aspirants participated in the process.
The party announced that Bola Tinubu was its presidential candidate after he received 1,271 votes from party delegates.
This news was widely reported by local and international news outlets.
But was a list of 10 disqualified presidential aspirants published before the primaries? We checked.
No such list published
Many of the posts on Facebook listing the APC candidates claimed Chidi Cali was the source.
Cali runs Hope for Nigeria, a Facebook page that claims to “project everything good about Nigeria and detest bad governance and abuse of due process and rule of law”. The page has more than 750,000 followers and Cali personally has many thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter.
We looked through Cali’s personal Facebook page and Twitter account but found no post or quote like it.
There is also nothing like the list on Facebook on the official social media handles of the APC or its website.
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