Claim: Police Officers Carting Away Ballot Boxes During the Local Government Election Verdict: Unproven Background On October 5, 2024, an X user, with the username Ph TownCrier posted a video on his handle, showing some operatives of the Nigerian Police Force carrying the ballot boxes during the Rivers State Local Government election. The
Claim: Police Officers Carting Away Ballot Boxes During the Local Government Election
Verdict: Unproven
Background
On October 5, 2024, an X user, with the username Ph TownCrier posted a video on his handle, showing some operatives of the Nigerian Police Force carrying the ballot boxes during the Rivers State Local Government election. The post, which was captioned “Rivers State LGA election. Police officers recorded carting away election materials in Rumuigbo, Port Harcourt.” This suggests that police officers were involved in the election despite the court order barring police participation in the poll.
This claim was posted with respect to the Rivers State Local Government election that was held on Saturday, October 4th, 2024, in which 22 candidates of the Action Peoples Party (APP) were declared as winners of the election out of the 23 local government areas in the state.
Before the election, there was a back-and-forth between different political tendencies due to the ongoing feud between state Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike over the control of the political organs in the State.
Ahead of the election, the Nigeria Police Force announced its withdrawal from participating in the poll, citing the Federal High Court order of 30 September, which barred the police from providing security and the INEC from providing the voter register. The police stated that they would not provide security for the election.
The state governor insisted that the election would be held regardless of the police’s decision to withdraw from the election duty. While the election was held with minimal violence, there were reactions from Nigerians indicating that, despite the alleged withdrawal from the poll, officers and men of the Nigerian Police were still on the ground, causing civil unrest and rigging the election in the state, as shown in the video.
As of the time of writing this report, the video has generated 1000 reposts, 331,000 views, and over 900 likes.
Due to the gravity and the virality of the claim, NDR decided to check its veracity.
Verification
To verify the veracity of the claim, NDR subjected the posted video to key frame-by-frame analysis using InVID, InVID, a video verification tool, used to detect the details and full information about multimedia information.
The result revealed that the video was posted by Guardian Newspaper on its official YouTube platform on Saturday, 5th 2024, around 1:33 pm. The platform used the PH_Towncrier as its source. The Guardian is one of the leading newspapers in Nigeria.
Screenshot of the Result of our Findings, using InVID
We also examined the inscription on the ballot boxes that were carried by the police officers in one video used in the claim, it bears the acronym “RSIEC” which stands for Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission.
The NDR fact-checker also reached out to the Police Public Relations Officer of the River State Police Command, SP GRACE IRINGE-KOKO, through a phone call, and she asked that the link to the claim be sent to her for proper examination before her formal response.
Screenshot of our message to the Rivers State Polic PRO
However, after sending the link and the video, attempts to get her to respond proved abortive. Her phone line went off. We also attempted to contact her via WhatsApp, but this was also futile. She became unreachable.
Conclusion
The digital tool used to fact-check the claim revealed that the video was first taken on October 5th, 2024, on the day of the Rivers State Local Government election, and the ballot boxes were replicas of the ones used during the Local Government elections on the 5th of October 2024, we were unable to determine whether the police officers in the video are genuine Police operatives of the Rivers State Command or of Nigeria. Our inability to authenticate the photograph through the Police’s official channel. As a result, there is insufficient evidence to declare the claim as true or false, it is, therefore, assessed as unproven.
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