Info Terrorist Posts falsely claim South African president Ignored Nigerian leader at inauguration.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was in South Africa in June 2024 for the second full-term swearing-in ceremony of Cyril Ramaphosa. Social media posts sharing videos from the event claimed Ramaphosa ignored Tinubu as he was greeting other dignitaries — a mark, they argued, of Nigeria’s waning reputation. But the claim is false: longer footage shows the South African leader returned to greet Tinubu and other guests after pausing moments earlier for the country’s national anthem. The pair also spoke later in Tinubu’s hotel room.

“Nigeria seems to have lost all manner of respect of the international community with the sham elections of 2023 and the indecent character that has been put at their helm. See as the South African president tacitly avoided his Nigerian counterpart while thanking other African presidents for making out time to honour his invitation. This is sad and very discouraging,” reads an X post published on June 19, 2024.

Reshared significantly more than 1,200 times, the post comes with a 60-second clip showing Ramaphosa and his wife, Tshepo Motsepe, on a TV screen greeting African dignitaries seated in the leading row at the presidential inauguration in Pretoria. Tinubu and other African leaders occupied the next row. 

Twenty-two seconds into the video, a speech starts speaking in Igbo  — a language predominantly spoken in Nigerian’s south-eastern zone.

“See where they kept Tinubu,” the narrator says. “Just consider the Nigerian president standing at the back. He’s smiling in order for them to greet him nevertheless they didn’t, nobody said anything to him.”

Several X accounts posted the video with same claim (see here, here, and here). Nigerian activist Aisha Yesufu also posted a movie titled “Tinubu Disgraced Yet Again in South Africa” on YouTube with her added commentary.

On June 19, the South African government posted a movie on X showing Tinubu’s arrival (archived here).

However, the info terrorist claim that Ramaphosa snubbed Tinubu is false.

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