Claim: Facebook users shared an image said to be that of Okpoko Road to commend the Anambra State government.
Verdict: FALSE
The image shared is not of Okpoko Road construction. The image is an old image used to depict road projects.
Full Text
Nigeria’s election cycle is always characterized by an array of promises to convince the electorate to vote for candidates. Politicians and their supporters often use wrong or doctored images to claim that their principals have delivered on previous campaign promises. These claims are endless, from road projects to bridges, buildings, and fighting insurgency.
This article here gives a detailed account of some instances. The electioneering period of 2023 saw a fair share of these types of campaigns.
On 7 March 2023, a Facebook user, Uchenna Umeh, shared an image with the caption “Okpoko 7/3/2023 Solution is here. I kid you not,” to show the supposed effort of the governor of Anambra State, Charles Soludo.
The image was also shared on Instagram by Uchenna Umeh (@Umehucheks).
Another Facebook user, Eche Obed Nwokwu, shared the same image with the same narrative that it was from Okpoko in Anambra State.
Screenshot of claim by Eche Obed Nwokwu
The claim was countered by a Twitter user, a Former Governor (@Sociallizee), who noted the image was from Ibadan.
In his words: “Just for them to deceive Ndi Anambra that Soludo is working, so that they would support him and his Okuko Igbo party on Saturday, Soludo boys went and steal a road project far away in Ibadan and brand it Okpoko road. Fear of Obedients and March 11.”
Screenshot of tweet by @Sociallizee
As of 14 March 2023, the tweet had over 2,000 engagements. Interestingly, the posts with the image @Sociallizee was responding to are no longer available on the pages he quoted.
To ascertain the veracity of this claim which has been questioned, we chose to verify the assertion.
Verification
We conducted a reverse image search using several search engines and found that the image had been used to describe different road projects.
From the Kugbo-Maraba road by the Guardian in 2016 to the Lagos-Badagry expressway by Premium Times in 2017, the Kano-Katsina expressway by New Mail in 2017, the Lagos Ibadan expressway by the Guardian in 2018, to the Lagos Ogun expressway by Punch in 2019.
Although the image has been used to describe different road constructions, the first road construction it was used for online was that of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, according to TinEye and Google reverse image search.
Result of reverse image search
To find what Okpoko Road in Anambra looks like, we conducted a keyword search which led to a March 2022 report about Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s promise to fix it. We also found a report of him inaugurating nine Okpoko road projects in September of the same year.
Our search results also reported that construction works had commenced on the roads as of October 2022. We searched on Google Maps for the street view of these roads, but the results available were images from 2020.
Search result on Google Map
We, therefore, visited Okpoko on 6 April 2023 to see the condition of the road. We discovered ongoing road construction and repairs, but the state of the road was not the same as that portrayed in the image shared.
Ongoing road repair on Ede Road, Okpoko
Ongoing road repair on School Road, Okpoko
Ongoing road repair on Awalite Street, Okpoko
None of the images we took of the Okpoko road project looks like the image used in the claim, as shown below.
Comparison of images used by claimant with real images from Okpoko Road project
Conclusion
Our findings show that the image used was not that of the Okpoko road construction in Anambra State. The claim is, therefore, false.
