FIJ
Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election, will turn 62 on Wednesday.
The former Anambra State Governor has said he does not intend to celebrate his birthday, but this has not quietened the buzz around him.
Some social media users have dug up a newspaper publication from 2013 claiming Obi was 50 at the time, thus creating the impression that he earlier falsified his age or is doing so now.
CLAIM: Obi turned 50 in 2013.
The news report was shared on Tuesday by Uche Rochas, a Twitter user, and placed side by side with a screenshot of Obi’s tweet stating he had no intention of celebrating his birthday. Rochas’ tweet ends with “Which one should we believe?”
VERIFICATION: According to Obi’s Wikipedia page, he was born on July 19, 1961, and became governor in 2003 at the age of 42.
This would mean that in 2013 he should have been 52, not 50 as the newspaper article claimed, and 62 in 2023 as Obi now says.
FIJ made further checks and found a 2011 article published by All Africa.
The article published on July 20 with the headline ‘Why I’ll Not Celebrate My 50th Birthday — Obi’ credited Obi with speaking with newsmen a day earlier, and saying his birthday did not come up during a meeting with his commissioners.
This story came two years before The Nation’s, and there are no records to show Obi falsified his age or recorded two different birth dates.
FIJ also found a news article by CKN News in 2013 correctly reporting Obi’s age as 52 at the time.
CONCLUSION: The article by The Nation newspaper in 2013 erroneously reported Obi’s birthday as his 50th.
VERDICT: The claim that Obi was 50 in 2013 is false.
