Claim: President Mahama wears colourful sneakers and jeans jacket on official duty
Source: Social Media (X, Facebook and TikTok)
Verdict: Manipulated
Researched by Nusrat Essah
The Ashanti Regional Minister, Dr Frank Amoakohene, on January 12, 2026, shared an image showing President John Dramani Mahama wearing a colourful Free The Youth (FTY) sneakers with a jeans trousers and denim jacket on X and Facebook.
The image showed President Mahama shaking hands with another man, with military officers and an aircraft in the background.
The post captioned “Guess the Foot Size. Swag President, Sei Kutuuu” had accumulated 5.5k reactions, 640 comments and 45 shares on Facebook; on X, it had 104,000 views, 4.5k likes, and 246 reposts.
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The same image was shared by one of Ghana’s biggest local language media outlets, Peacefmonline on Facebook. The post had gained more than 25,000 reactions, over 1,900 comments, and 406 reshares.
The image has also been shared elsewhere online, including by a popular Nigerian blog, Instablog9ja.
GhanaFact also surfaced another image of President Mahama wearing the FTY shirt and sneakers, in a group photo with members of the Free The Youth.
This report seeks to verify the authenticity of the images.
Fact-Check
GhanaFact noted the images began circulating two days after President John Dramani Mahama was presented with a pair of the newly released limited-edition Nike collaboration sneakers, the FTY x Air Jordan 1, and a branded shirt by the founders of the Ghanaian streetwear brand Free The Youth (FTY), on January 10, 2026.
We traced the circulating image shared by the minister and Peace FM to ‘ghana.com44’, a TikTok account that appeared to have first shared the photo of the president wearing the colorful sneaker on official duty. The account appeared to have tagged FTY and another TikTok account in their post.
Using Google Reverse Image Search, GhanaFact traced the image to a video of Mahama’s arrival at the Yakubu Tali International Airport in Tamale for the launch of the National Apprenticeship Programme on April 30, 2025.
In the original video, President Mahama wore a blue shirt, dark trousers, and black shoes while shaking hands with the same man at the same location, with the same aircraft and security personnel in the background. This is contrary to the image which began circulating on January 12, 2026. Similar videos were shared here and here.
A closer look at the manipulated image also reveals distortions around Mahama’s hands, which appears to be three. One shaking the official, the other in his left pocked at the right hand visible. The president also appears to be greeting with his left hand. These are common signs of AI or digitally altered images.
Additionally, since receiving the sneakers and jersey gift, the president is not known to have attended any public event till he travelled out of the country to the United Kingdom on January 11, 2026.
To verify the second image of the President in a yellow FTY shirt and sneakers, GhanaFact used visual cues from the original image shared by FTY after their meeting with the president.
- In the original image, President Mahama is wearing slippers, wearing a polo shirt and receiving his shoe gift. The doctored image showed him in FTY sneakers with both hands in his pocket.
- In the doctored image, the hand of the FTY member presenting the gift to Mahama is truncated and he is wearing an FTY shirt which was only presented to him.
- Meanwhile, the facial expressions of all the FTY members align in both images.
Additionally, we used the Hive Moderation platform to determine whether the image was AI-generated. The results showed a 96.8% “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content.”
While President Mahama did receive the FTY sneakers and shirt, he did not publicly wear them.
Verdict
Therefore, the images showing Mahama wearing the FTY sneakers and shirt circulating on social media are AI-manipulated.
