Photos shared on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) purportedly showing President William Ruto’s office(s) are satirical.
One of the images shows a vehicle checkpoint with the signboard “Office of the President, Kenya”.
“Anyone looking for our president, kindly note,” X user @isaac_otwoma captioned the image.
Anyone looking for our president, kindly note 👇 pic.twitter.com/w19nsHwuKf
— Otwoma🇰🇪 (@isaac_otwoma) October 29, 2023
The other image shows President Ruto alighting from a plane with the caption “President William Samoei Ruto standing at the entrance of his office.”
According to a reverse image search on Google, the first image, posted on X, is a doctored image of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi- which has been previously published by Nation.Africa.
The second image, posted on Facebook, showed Ruto arriving in Rwanda for a two-day State Visit on April 4, 2023. The Image was first posted on X by the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency.
BREAKING:
President of Kenya, William Ruto arrives in Rwanda for a two-day State Visit.#RBANews pic.twitter.com/NYaorIr7oQ
— Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA) (@rbarwanda) April 4, 2023
The images were shared following news that the President has been making many trips abroad.
The Standard reported that since he was sworn in as President on September 13, 2023, Ruto has spent one in every five days outside the country.
As of the end of October 2023, Ruto spent 83 days out of the country, visiting over 45 cities in 38 countries since he became President.
On Wednesday, November 15, 2023, government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura defended Ruto’s trips abroad, saying they have earned Kenya tremendous benefits.
The posts on Facebook and X supposedly showing President William Ruto’s office(s) are, therefore, satirical.
This fact check was published by Business Today with technical support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck newsdesk, through the African Fact-Checking Alliance (AFCA).
