Rumours about Tinubu’s viral bike video dispelled
An investigation by the BBC Disinformation Unit has found no evidence to support claims that the viral cycling video shared by the presidential candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on 2 October had previously appeared on the internet.
Mr Tinubu uploaded the video to prove he was in good health, after rumours had been circulating that he had died or was poorly.
After Mr Tinubu shared the video, several people on the internet called its authenticity into question – suggesting it was an old video that had been shared in 2021 and earlier this year by representatives of Mr Tinubu.
The BBC Disinformation Unit put the video through INVid – a verification tool. It generated keyframes which were then analysed using Google’s reverse image search.
In-depth analysis of the reverse image search results showed that the video had not appeared on the internet before 2 October 2022.
Though there were versions of the images we investigated with older dates in the search results, further analysis showed those dates were from pages where the video or its keyframe appeared as an “include”.
Includes usually occur when, for instance, the keyframe or image that is being searched appear as “related content” in an older YouTube page or webpage.
Other Twitter users used Mr Tinubu’s clothes as evidence that the video is old.
However, while Mr Tinubu was wearing what could be the same clothes, his shoes were different.
This supports the idea that the two photos were taken on different days.
