On February 9, 2023, Dele Alake, the director of strategic communication of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential campaign council, appeared at the Nigeria info 99.3 Fm in Abuja.
While answering questions on Bola Tinubu, his party’s presidential candidate, Alake said one of the “famous gaffes” where Bola Tinubu said “a townhall different from balablu blublu bulaba,” was manipulated.
“No! That again is not true, it was doctored, I am telling you it was doctored because we showed the real original video clip on TVC.” He added that the real video was “broken into snippets and thrown on the social media,” Alake said.
The video of Alake’s claim was shared on Twitter alongside the caption “Lies Alert ‼️ Dele Alake says that “Bala Blu Bulaba” was doctored. The video has been seen by over 70,000 people in 24 hours.
Claim: Bola Tinubu’s town hall meeting video in Imo state was doctored.
Verification
The CDD Election War Room checked Television Continental (TVC), a media house where Tinubu is a promoter and financial investor, and found that their live stream of the event captures Tinubu’s gaffe.
The 33 minutes and 44 seconds-long video clip of the APC Town Hall meeting with the private sector can be found here on TVC news YouTube channel.
The actual event took place in Imo state and shortly after his opening remark, about three minutes and 40 seconds into the video, Bola Tinubu made the gaffe.
We also searched through the TVC Youtube channel, where Dele Alake said they posted the original video clip. However, we could not find a different version as claimed by Alake.
The TVC video shows Tinubu indeed uttering unintelligible words.
Verdict
Dele Alake’s claim that the video was doctored is false.