This image on Facebook of Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Raila Odinga pecking a woman has been ALTERED.

Part of the text accompanying the image is in Swahili and loosely translates to; “Safe journey and may God protect leader Riggy G…You are going to Italy for work. Leave these ones alone.”

The image was shared on 23 July 2023, a day after the departure of Kenya’s Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, also known as ‘Riggy G,’ to Italy for a United Nations Food Summit.

But is the image authentic?

We performed a Google reverse search and came up with several results of the image under scrutiny in which a woman supposedly requested social media users to stop photoshopping her image to include politicians. The woman is Jenniffer Waruingi, an actress and former Miss Tourism Lamu County.

The search also led to a tweet featuring the original image of Odinga pecking his wife, Ida. The politician, who is also the Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya coalition leader, is in the same attire as in the photo being fact-checked.

A reverse search of the image accompanying the mentioned tweet was taken on 10 December 2021, when Odinga declared his candidacy for President in the 2022 general election. The photo was credited to Nation Media Group’s Sila Kiplagat.

PesaCheck has looked into an image on Facebook of Kenya’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Raila Odinga pecking a woman and found it to have been ALTERED.

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 Harriet Ogayoand 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.