FAKE NEWS ALERT: IBB did not endorse Obi for president, says aide

Ibrahim Babangida, former head of state, has denied endorsing Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) for the position of president.

There had been claims in recent days that Babangida had aligned with the position of former President Olusegun Obasanjo on endorsing Obi.

The claims followed a post from a Twitter account, which had the name of Babangida.

A post from the Twitter account had alleged that the former head of state had declared his support for the LP presidential candidate.

“Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo will forever be a true elder statesman and a boss in the military. No serving General in the Nigerian Army today joined the military earlier than 1982. By then, Obasanjo had already finished his military career. I respect him a lot, with his endorsement,” the purported post reads.

Although the Twitter handle states that the Babangida page is a parody account, there have been responses to the tweet which indicate that several persons assume that the account belongs to Babangida.

The tweet has been viewed over 700,000 times, and has more than 19,000 likes.

When contacted on Wednesday night, Kassim Afegbua, media aide to Babangida, denied the claim that the former head of state had endorsed Obi.

“It is not true please. IBB does not have a Twitter handle nor Facebook,” Afegbua told TheCable.

Meanwhile, the development also comes weeks after Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed, his running mate, visited the former head of state at his residence in Minna, the Niger capital.