A news report claiming that European leaders shunned and declined to meet with Bola Tinubu has circulated online.
A verified Twitter user, @Dr_chazduke, shared the report on Sunday, May 14, 2023, with the caption, “BREAKING NEWS: Bola Tinubu Shunned by Europe’s Leaders, Decline To Meet With Him. No be Peter Obi or Obidients do this one- The world is watching.”
The post has since garnered over 370,000 views and over 3,000 retweets as of when it was retrieved from the microblogging platform. It was also posted by another Twitter user, @King_Inspires as seen here.
This is coming after Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, reportedly departed the country on a working visit to Europe ahead of his official swearing-in ceremony on May 29, 2023.
Tinubu’s aide, Tunde Rahaman, said in a statement that he would be meeting with investors and key business allies during the trip.
Claim: European leaders shunned and declined to meet with Bola Tinubu
Verification
CDD Election War Room traced the source of the purported “breaking news” to an online news website known as Telepublic.
Telepublic published the report on May 10, the same day Tinubu left Nigeria for Europe.
Parts of the report read, “The reason for Europe’s leaders’ refusal to meet with Tinubu is not a secret. They all agree that his election was fraudulent and illegitimate, and hence they totally reject the idea of legitimizing him in any way. They believe that by meeting with Tinubu, they would be endorsing his rigged election and betraying the Nigerian people.”
Further investigations, however, revealed that no credible or reputable news website reported the incident as of the time of this fact-check.
We ran a check on Telepublic via Whois domain check and found that it is a newly created news site, registered on April 26, 2023, weeks after Nigeria’s 2023 general elections.
Meanwhile, the international community including the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and France, congratulated Tinubu and pledged partnership following his emergence at the February 25 presidential poll. This was reported here, here, and here.
Verdict: FALSE
The report is false with no evidence supporting the claim that European leaders shunned and declined to meet with Bola Tinubu. We found that no credible or reputable media platform reported the incident while the viral news report was traced to a newly created blog, registered in April 2023.
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