FALSE: Lucy Wanjiru has not been appointed to head Jubilee Party National Aspirants Forum
A poster shared on Facebook claiming that the ruling Jubilee Party has appointed Lucy Wanjiru to head the Jubilee Party National Aspirants Forum is FALSE.
Photos of party leader President Uhuru Kenyatta and Wanjiru appear on the poster.
A congratulatory message by Kenyatta to Wanjiru for the alleged appointment also runs across the top part of the poster.
Another text below Wanjiru’s image reads “the most progressive leader endowed to propel the Jubilee Party and the aspirants to fruition”.
Wanjiru was the Party of National Unity (PNU) candidate in the 15 July 2021 Kiambaa by-election but withdrew from the race in favour of Jubilee Party’s Kariri Njama.
Another version of the poster was shared on Facebook, this time excluding the image of Kenyatta.
However, there is no information about Wanjiru’s appointment on the Jubilee Party’s Facebook and Twitter handles, where it routinely posts the party’s activities.
In a Facebook post on 27 September 2021, the Jubilee Party disowned the said poster, terming it fake.
PesaCheck has looked into the poster shared on Facebook claiming that the ruling Jubilee Party has appointed Lucy Wanjiru to head the Jubilee Party National Aspirants Forum, and finds 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 to 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 Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
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 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.