FALSE: The Jubilee Party candidate did not win the Kiambaa parliamentary by-election
A Facebook post claiming that Kenya’s ruling Jubilee Party candidate, Kariri Njama, won the Kiambaa parliamentary by-election is FALSE.
The post, titled ‘Kiambaa Final Results’, shows Njama garnered 22,026 votes against United Democratic Alliance’s (UDA) Njuguna Wanjiku’s 21, 598.
The by-election, which took place on 15 July 2021, was called to fill the vacancy left following the death of the sitting MP, Paul Koinange, due to COVID-19 complications on 31 March 2021.
However, the claim that the ruling party, Jubilee, won the election has no basis in fact. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) declared UDA party’s Njuguna Wanjiku the duly elected member of national assembly for Kiambaa constituency, after garnering 21,773 votes. Jubilee Party’s Kariri Njama was second with 21,263 votes.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that the ruling Jubilee Party candidate, Kariri Njama, won the Kiambaa parliamentary by-election, and finds it to be a 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 deputy 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.