The post was shared by an X account called “SabinaNkiru” which regularly publishes content critical of the Tinubu administration.
Several comments below the post mocked Tinubu for the purported loss.
“Nobody rates them at all. You cannot give what you don’t have. They cannot rig votes there. They thought everything would become easy after they rigged and entered,” one X user commented.
The claim has also appeared in several Facebook posts, including here, here, and here.
Some of the Facebook posts included screenshots of an article that claims to list the votes received by candidate countries.
But the claims are misleading.
Not involved
The Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, consists of 47 countries that work to promote and protect human rights worldwide.
Nigeria did not contest the latest election held in October 2024, in which 18 members were elected into the council for three years.
An internet search for the latest poll led to a statement published on the UN website announcing the results.
According to the statement, votes were cast anonymously during a secret ballot process so voters could not be linked to their choices (archive here).
Pascal Sim, a media officer with the Human Rights Council, also confirmed that Nigeria had not been a candidate in the most recent election held on October 9, 2024.
“Nigeria was not a candidate and did not get any vote. There were five vacant seats for countries of the African group at the 2024 election and only five candidates: Benin (181 votes), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (172), Ethiopia (171), the Gambia (181) and Kenya (181) which were elected,” Sim told AFP Fact Check in an email.
Liberia got only one vote and was not elected.
A report published before the election to assess the state of human rights protection in each candidate country did not include Nigeria (archive here).
Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were listed as the candidate countries from Africa.
Recycled article
Searching for the keywords “Malawi+topped+voting+African+nations”, AFP Fact Check found that the screenshot of the UN statement in one of the misleading posts showed the results of another Human Rights Council election held in October 2023.
The statement, also featured on the UN website, announced the election of 15 member countries to serve on the council for three years from January 1, 2024 (archived here).
“Malawi topped the voting for African nations, with 182 votes, followed by Côte d’Ivoire (181), Ghana (179), Burundi (168), and Nigeria (3),” it reads.
Sim confirmed that “although not a candidate, Nigeria received three votes in its favour” in the 2023 poll.
Nigerian presidential adviser Bayo Onanuga also said his country had been voted for in error last year.
“The country did not stand as a candidate for this cycle of elections, just like it did not stand for election in 2023. Whatever vote was recorded for our country must have been cast in error in the secret balloting by some countries which thought Nigeria was on the ballot,” he said in a post published on his Facebook account on October 13, 2024 (archived here).
“There was no competition in the African regional group, as the continent fielded the same number of candidates as available seats,” he added.
