A Facebook page, NDC Tv, shared an image of a badly constructed road, seeking to ridicule the government’s “year of roads” mantra.
From a Google reverse image search conducted, the image depicted in the post is a road in South Africa and not Ghana.
Full Text
The Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Ken Ofori-Atta in November 2019, declared 2020 as the “year of roads”.
Mr Ofori-Atta, who said this during the 2020 budget presentation in parliament, explained that the government was going to prioritise the road sector and improve road infrastructure in the country.
The president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, reiterated the promise in December 2019, stressing that the government intended to embark on aggressive road development throughout the country.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) expressed reservations about the promise, describing it as a ploy to deceive Ghanaians ahead of the 2020 general elections.
A Deputy Director of Research for the NDC, Kale Caesar, said on Power 97.9 FM that there was no way the government could redeem that promise.
Subsequently, a picture circulating on social media shows a poorly constructed tarred road being peeled off. The picture shows a man removing the asphalt with his bare hands.
One of the platforms on which the picture was shared was NDC Tv which sought to portray the picture as a road that was constructed in Ghana.
The post encouraged Ghanaian electorates to vote out Nana Akuffo-Addo and his government in the upcoming elections.
“Year of roads indeed. Let’s vote out Akuffo Addo and his gov of deceit. Vote2,” the post read.
The post generated a lot of reactions, comments and shares.
Verification
To verify the claim, Dubawa conducted a google reverse image search to confirm the source of the image. The reverse Google image search revealed that the image was first posted on Twitter by chief Erican with the Twitter handle @ericanSA on the morning of Saturday, November 7, 2020. The write-up that accompanied the picture was “This is the newly unveiled Road in Zeerust in North West. Won’t be surprised in Hundreds of millions of rands were spent here.”
The image was subsequently shared on Twitter and Facebook by this, this, this, among others.
Further search shows that Zeerust is a town in the North West Province of South Africa.
All the posts, except the one posted on NDC Tv, indicated that the road was constructed in South Africa. Therefore, the claim is false and misleading.
The reporter produced this fact-check under the auspices of the Dubawa 2020 Fellowship in partnership with The Finder Newspaper to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and to enhance media literacy in the country.
