FALSE: This video clip does not show Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto conceding defeat
The video was extracted from a longer clip by Sky News where both Ruto and his competitor Raila Odinga committed to accept the outcome of the poll.
A video shared on Twitter claiming to show Deputy President William Ruto conceding defeat in Kenya’s 9 August 2022 presidential election is FALSE.
“Breaking News!!!! Ruto concedes defeat,” reads the tweet accompanying the video. The text repeating the claim also appears across the screen on the video in which the DP is flanked by the Director of Communications of his presidential campaign Hussein Mohamed and ‘Hustler Nation’ spokesman and digital strategist Dennis Itumbi.
However, a review of the video clip does not contain a concession speech by the DP as claimed.
“What I am asking the country, I have asked all my supporters…because we have, since 2013… President Uhuru Kenyatta and I took the country on a path of reconciliation. We made a commitment to this country, that we will do whatever it takes, for this country, never again to go the path of violence… and in the last two elections, we succeeded. There was an attempt by my current competitor to drive the country into that direction. He did not succeed. I don’t think he will succeed in this election. I have made a commitment that whatever the outcome of this election, I will accept the results,” Ruto is heard saying.
An announcement of this nature by Ruto would have received widespread attention from news organisations, yet an internet search returns no credible reports on the same.
There is also no information about the alleged concession on Ruto’s Twitter and Facebook timelines.
The video contains the logo of Sky News, a British broadcaster. PesaCheck found the original video from which the clip was extracted, published on the broadcaster’s YouTube Channel.
The video was published on 8 August 2022, a day before Kenya went to the polls where Ruto was contesting against three other presidential candidates including former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The video contains sentiments from both Ruto and Odinga reiterating their commitment to accept the outcome of the elections.
PesaCheck has examined the video claiming to show Deputy President William Ruto conceding defeat in the 9 August 2022 presidential election, and found it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck senior fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
