This Facebook post with a video purportedly showing the moment Nigerian political rivals Atiku Abubakar and Nyesom Wike met for the first time since the general elections is FALSE.

The post reads: “Moment Wike and Atiku Met Face To Face for the first time after elections.”

In the video, the two politicians display cordial demeanour towards one another.

Wike’s 2023 presidential ambition did not materialise after losing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) primary presidential election to Abubakar, the party’s candidate. The two politicians have been at loggerheads notwithstanding the attempts to reconcile them.

The video in the claim, however, predates the 2023 general election in Nigeria.

A keyword word search for “Wike meets Atiku” on Google established that the video dates back to 2022.

The original video was published on this YouTube channel on 4 August 2022 with the headline, “PDP Crisis: Atiku, Wike Meet In Abuja”.

The video also appears on other YouTube uploads dated 29 May 2022.

There are no reports from a credible source that Abubakar and Wike met after the February 2023 polls.

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a video purportedly showing the moment political rivals Atiku Abubakar and Nyesom Wike met for the first time since the Nigerian elections and finds 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 fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck 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, visitpesacheck.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.