Old video circulated with claims that coalition endorsed Nigerian opposition leader Peter Obi as presidential candidate

Although Nigeria’s election is not until 2027, political alliances are forming, and the dissemination of misleading information has already started. A video widely shared on Facebook claims to show a political party endorsing opposition leader Peter Obi for their presidential candidate. However, the claim is misleading; the video was first posted in February 2023, a few days before the previous presidential election that year.

“Wętch the moment ADC ann0unced Peter Obi as their Presıdential candıdate 2027 go h0t o (sic),” read the caption of a video shared on Facebook.

The post has been shared almost 9,000 times since it was published on July 3, 2025.

The almost four-minute-long video shows a man addressing a gathering, saying, “We have decided that the Obi-Datti movement is a worthy cause to endorse”.  A banner featuring the logo of political party African Democratic Congress (ADC) can be seen in the background.

The video also bears the watermark of Channels TV, one of Nigeria’s major broadcasters.

Obi was one of the top three presidential contenders among the 18 candidates in Nigeria’s 2023 election, where Bola Tinubu was elected as president.

Influential political figures, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, have expressed dissatisfaction with the Tinubu-led administration and have now joined a new political coalition under the helm of the already-existing African Democratic Congress party (archived here).

The coalition seeks to defeat President Bola Tinubu in the upcoming 2027 presidential election.

However, the video showing a man endorsing Obi as the presidential candidate on behalf of ADC is not recent.

2023 video

Using the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify, we extracted multiple keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search.

This led to a video posted on the verified YouTube page of Channels Television (archived here).

The video includes the same footage as the one circulating with recent claims.

However, it was published more than two years ago, on February 20, 2023.

At the 5’30” mark in the video, the man addressing the gathering makes the same statement about endorsing the Obi-Datti movement. Peter Obi was a presidential candidate in the 2023 election, running with Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed as the vice-presidential candidate (archived here).

News reports from 2023 identify the man in the video as Mani Ibrahim, chairman of the board of trustees of the African Democratic Congress (archived here).

In March, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which coordinates elections in Nigeria, said it had started working on the election project plan for 2027 (archived here). The plan aims to improve the efficiency and reliability of voting processes.

The plan has to be finalised and released to the public before political parties, including ADC, can hold primaries to select their candidates for the 2027 election.

More AFP Fact Check debunks related to Nigeria can be found here.