Altered photo does not show Kenyan opposition leader crowned at Nigerian festival

“Former PM @RailaOdinga has this evening been crowned as a special Osun-Osogbo elder at an invite-only ceremony held at a ‘sacred grove’ along the banks of Osun River, Osogbo City, Nigeria,” reads a post published on X (formerly known as Twitter) on September 1, 2023.

The accompanying photo purportedly shows Odinga seated on a red and gold throne in the shape of a giant bird.

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Screenshot showing the altered image, taken on September 20, 2023

The post has been shared over 180 times and viewed more than 186,000 times.

Osun-Osogbo is an annual festival held in the Osogbo region of Nigeria every August to celebrate the goddess of fertility and water, Osun. The ceremony is part of an indigenous Yoruba religious tradition (archived here).

The festival is celebrated at the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove – a UNESCO World Heritage site (archived here) – and attracts thousands of Yorubas, an ancient ethnic group in west Africa that numbers around 40 million, the vast majority living in Nigeria.

“RAILA WENT TO NIGERIA TO GET POWERS,” reads the caption on a post, this time shared on Facebook with the same image.

Odinga has been leading protests against the government over claims the presidential election in August 2022 was rigged, as well as what he says is the government’s failure to tackle the soaring cost of living in the country.

In the run-up to Kenya’s 2022 polls, President William Ruto and allies repeatedly called Odinga “mganga” (archived here). While the word means “doctor” in Swahili, it can also be used to refer to “witch doctors” and sorcerors.

Ruto was declared the winner of Kenya’s presidential ballot after narrowly beating Odinga (archived here).

The photo, however, does not show Odinga being crowned as an elder at the Osun-Osogbo festival in Nigeria.

Bokassa coronation

By conducting a reverse image search, we found the photo had been digitally manipulated.

We traced the original image to several news sites here and here (archived here and here) as well as to AFP’s photo archives.

The photo shows Bokassa crowning himself emperor on December 4, 1977, in Bangui.

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Screenshot showing the original coronation photo as it appears in AFP’s photo archives

In the false social media posts, Odinga’s face was digitally added to the image, replacing Bokassa’s.

Bokassa was president of the CAR from 1966 to 1976 and self-styled emperor of the Central African Empire between 1976 and 1979.

He declared himself CAR president for life in 1972 and then Emperor Bokasa I in a lavish ceremony modelled on Napoleon’s coronation in Paris in 1804 (archived here).

Bokassa’s reign was marked by bloodshed and repression. He was overthrown in 1979 by French troops (archived here).

Odinga’s spokesman Dennis Onyango told AFP Fact Check that the veteran Kenyan politician did not visit Nigeria in early September.

“Our party leader was not in Nigeria early this month as the posts suggest, neither was he crowned an elder in the country,” said Onyango.