Africa Check has verified a viral Facebook post claiming that a Russian boy hacked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) website and released “authentic” results showing Peter Obi won the 2023 presidential election.
The post, according to the fact-checking organization, includes a photo of a young white man in a suit and reads in part:
According to Legit.ng, the post includes a link to an article published on a suspicious-looking website that includes the same photo as well as one of Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, and a graph that shows the leaked “results.”
According to the hacker, Obi’s Labour Party received 55 million votes, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) received 25 million, and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) received 15 million.
INEC declared Bola Tinubu of the APC the election winner, contrary to the hacker’s claim.
Tinubu received more than eight million votes, defeating PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar, who received 6.9 million votes. According to the official INEC results, Obi came in third place with 6.1 million votes.
INEC’s chief press secretary, Rotimi Oyekanmi, responded to the development by saying the post was “fake news” spread by “mischief makers.”
“No one hacked the official Inec website or its Results Viewing Portal before, during, or after the 2023 General Election.” “Nothing like that happened,” Oyekanmi said.
According to Africa Check, a Google reverse image search revealed that the boy in the photo is Nikolai Desyatnichenko, a 16-year-old high school student from Novy Urengoy in Siberia, northern Russia, in November 2017.
At the time, he delivered a contentious anti-war speech to the German parliament, which was widely reported in international media.