Nigerians at home and abroad have reacted in different ways to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) pronouncement which declared Bola Tinubu as the winner of the February 25, 2023 election.
Multiple parties, including the Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), are contesting the elections through laid-out legal means.
On March 15, 2023, singer and songwriter Charles Oputa, popularly known as Charly Boy, tweeted a video claiming that the US has asked INEC to prove that the results declared are correct.
CDD Election War Room checked this claim and here is what we found.
Verification
CDD Election War Room watched the two minutes and 20 seconds video posted by Charly Boy and found that the speaker in the video was genuinely discrediting INEC and asking INEC to prove itself and prove that the results it declared were actually real.
The speaker in the video made several allegations against INEC.
We traced the video to its source, which happens to be a YouTube page named NADECO, and had just two videos as of March 17, 2023; the fuller version of the short clip posted by Charly Boy and another one showing women protesting at Port-Harcourt.
We checked the page history and found the page was created on March 13, 2023, two weeks after the presidential election.
The screenshot below shows the information on the date the YouTube channel was created.
The video description has the name Lyod Ukwu as the executive director, and Bruce Delvalle as the general counsel. The description also includes Info@nadecousa.com; nadecoamerica@gmail.com and nadecousa.com as the contact details and website address respectively.
CDD Election War Room analysed the website nadecousa.com and found it was created on August 17, 2021, with the registrant name as JohnBull Igwe.
JohnBull also has a YouTube page with a few of Llyod Ukwu’s NADECO videos. We also checked nadecousa.com and found the same Loyd Ukwu’s NADECO videos on the website with some NADECO publications.
NADECO VS NADECO
On March 9, 2023, Dele Alake, the special adviser on media to the president-elect, described Lloyd Ukwu as a NADECO imposter for organising a press conference to discredit the just-concluded presidential election.
Again, on March 9, 2023, a former Secretary General of (NADECO), Ayo Opadokun, stated that the coalition has no existing branch in the United States.
Opadokun blasted the said Ukwu for using NADECO to push a “pernicious, narrow ethnic supremacist agenda.”
Opadokun said NADECO ceased having branches abroad when it resolved at the global conference of the organization presided over by its then leader, Anthony Enahoro, in Virginia, US sometime 1999.
Obioha described Alake’s remark against Ukwu as nefarious and a diatribe, stating that Llyod Ukwu was not an impostor.
Although the US branch of the defunct pro-democracy group had distanced itself from Ukwu’s activities.
However, Obioha insisted that Ukwu had the right to his political opinion, stating that Ukwu was a pillar of NADECO when the body was active, contrary to Alake’s claim.
Has the US asked INEC to verify results?
On March 1, 2023, the US congratulated Tinubu on winning the just-concluded presidential election.
The message is contained in a States Department press briefing by Ned Price, and at no point in the briefing did the US ask INEC to prove the results declared are correct.
NADECO USA does not speak for the government of the United States.
Verdict
The video posted by Charly Boy is a video from a NADECO group asking INEC to prove that the results declared are correct, not the US government; the US government already congratulated Bola Tinubu as the president-elect.
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