CLAIM: A picture of the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi has been forwarded “many times” to different Whatsapp groups claiming that he alongside three others was the only Nigerian to have ever made the front page of America’s Time Magazine.
FULL-TEXT: The originator of the claim designed a picture of Peter Obi and accompanied it with some text. The text reads: “Only 4 Nigerians have ever made the front page of TIME Magazine: Gowon, Sade Adu, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and now Peter Obi.”
VERIFICATION: PRNigeria conducted a keyword search of Nigerians to have appeared on the cover (front page) of the popular Time Magazine.
Results revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari, Abubakr Shekau, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, and Chimamanda Adichie have been listed among the most 100 influential people in the world in 2015.
An investigation by PRNigeria also revealed that the Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was named among the 100 influential people in 2021 while former Head of State Yakubu Gowon, Sade Adu, and Peter Obi have never been on the list of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Charly Boy was the first person to have published the claim using his verified Twitter account on February 25th, election day.
PRNigeria observed that the Tweet, at the time of carrying out this fact-check, has garnered 7618 Retweets, 207 quotes, 1 million views, and 30.8k likes.
CONCLUSION: An investigation conducted by PRNigeria did not reveal that Peter Obi, Yakubu Gowon, and Sade Adu were ever named among the 100 most influential people in the world by America’s Time Magazine.
Therefore, PRNigeria, concludes that the claim is FALSE.
