This tweet claiming to show 1.5 million people listening to Kenyan President William Ruto on 15 July 2023 in opposition leader Raila Odinga’s “bedroom” is FALSE.

The image is of a mammoth crowd crammed in an open field. Other people are crowded on a floodlights’ pylon.

The text accompanying the image reads: “Incase (sic) you missed. Over 1.5 million people showed up yesterday (15 July 2023) in Raila’s bedroom to listen to the President of Africa, Dr. William Ruto”.

Ruto attended a thanksgiving ceremony of Internal Security and National Administration Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo at Oriwo Boys High School, Homa Bay County. The county, according to media reports here and here, is Odinga’s stronghold.

Ruto also handed the school a new bus and opened a digital skills laboratory at the school.

But did a mammoth crowd listen to Ruto on 15 July 2023?

A reverse image search shows that the image was taken on 25 March 2016 when football fans attended the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualification match between Egypt and Nigeria in Kaduna.

About 40,000 fans gathered at Ahmadu Bello Stadium, which has a capacity of 16,000, after the Kaduna State government allowed free entry to the facility.

The game ended in a 1–1 draw. However, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) fined Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) $5,000 for overcrowding at the 2017 AFCON qualifier game. CAF warned Nigeria of sanctions if such an occurrence was repeated.

PesaCheck has looked into a tweet with an image supposedly of 1.5 million people listening to Kenyan President William Ruto on 15 July 2023 in opposition leader Raila Odinga’s “bedroom” 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 into 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 Naomi Wanjiku 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 the 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.