Claim: Somali President exchanges blows with his Deputy on live TV
Source: Viral video
Verdict: False
Researched by Rabiu Alhassan
A 12 seconds long video clip that shows two men engaging in fisticuffs is being passed around on social media as an alleged fight between the President of Somalia and his Vice.
With more than 177,000 subscribers on YouTube, Oak TV uploaded the video on August 15 with the title: “Somali President exchange[s] blows with Deputy on live TV” and has since garnered more than 12,970 views at the time of writing this report.
GhanaFact was first alerted to the video on WhatsApp, subsequently, we have seen the same video being shared on Facebook and used in online articles here, here and here
Fact-Check
The two men seen in the video are not the President of Somalia and the Vice President.
Interestingly, the Federal Government of Somalia does not even have a Vice President per the structure of the executive branch. The country has a head of state, who is the President-Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and head of government, who is Prime Minister-Hassan Ali Khayre (he was recently removed in a vote by Somalia’s parliament)
Somali President (L) and Prime Minister (R)
Who are the “two fighters”?
The two men seen in the video are the former Somaliland Speaker of the house of representatives, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi and then First deputy speaker, Bashe Mohammed Farah.
Somaliland is a region in northwestern Somalia that unilaterally declared independence from the country in 1991, though unrecognised by the international community.
Somaliland speaker of the house of representatives (R) and first deputy Speaker (L)
Old Video
“The [fight between] the two men was in 2015,” Somali Journalist Mohamed Odowa told GhanaFact in an interview.
This is confirmed by video footage uploaded onto YouTube by a channel belonging to one of the major media companies in Somaliland, Dhamays Media. The about 21 minutes long video was uploaded on September 12, 2015, and has since racked up more than 1.4 million views.
So, the unaltered old news clip is being presented in an inaccurate manner to misrepresent the footage and mislead viewers.
Conclusion
The two men seen exchanging blows in the viral social media video are not the President of Somalia and his Vice.
The two are the former Speaker of the house of representatives of Somaliland, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi and then First deputy speaker, Bashe Mohammed Farah.
