No evidence to support political assassination in Burkina Faso

Claim: An X user, (@PO_GrassRootM) Peter Obi Grassroots Mobilisation, claimed that a dozen presidential guards were arrested in Burkina Faso due to an attempted assassination on its President Ibrahim Traore. Verdict: False! A check on the official website of the Burkinabe government did not contain any information on presidential guards arrested about any recent assassination. […]

Claim: An X user, (@PO_GrassRootM) Peter Obi Grassroots Mobilisation, claimed that a dozen presidential guards were arrested in Burkina Faso due to an attempted assassination on its President Ibrahim Traore.

Verdict: False! A check on the official website of the Burkinabe government did not contain any information on presidential guards arrested about any recent assassination. Also, a Google search did not reveal any media report on the arrest of presidential guards in May.

Over the years, the West African region has witnessed a surge in coups to topple elected governments. While some have been successful, others failed. Most coups on the continent are caused by corruption, insecurity and suffering of the masses. The new military leaders often find it hard to rein in the effects of their ascension to power.

Burkina Faso has been prone to coups. Its current leader, Captain Ibrahim Traore, ascended to power through a coup, while his predecessor also took the same route.

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Since the coup that brought Traore to power on September 30, 2022, his government has announced a series of unsuccessful coup attempts, the latest being in January, 2024, according to media reports.

However, @PO_GrassRootM claimed that there was another assassination attempt in May, which led to the arrest of dozens of presidential guards.

The tweet reads: “JUST IN: More than a dozen presidential guards have been arrested in connection with an assassination attempt on the President of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore.”

It was posted on May 20, 2024, and garnered 128,700 views with 177 comments, 632 retweets and 2,200 likes.

The tweet did not state when the incident occurred, but a Google search brought up a tweet by @Dachronica (Les Misérables), which stated that the incident happened on the evening of May 19, 2024. The account also claimed that the incident was the ninth assassination attempt on the president.

The post further linked Traore to the reincarnation of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, late Thomas Sankara; thus, the coloniser of the country (France) “is agonising over finding another  Blaise Compaore to remind us that history revolves around crimes.”

With the rise in coordinated misinformation portraying Captain Traore as the new African Thomas Sankara, DUBAWA decided to investigate the claim.

Verification

We conducted a Google search using the statement: “Presidential guards arrested for an attempted coup in Burkina Faso.” The results were mostly from media reports of a failed coup in September, 2023, in which the government said four people were arrested after it thwarted the coup attempt.

One of the reports by Aljazeera quoted a spokesman of the ruling military, Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, saying some officers were caught in an attempt to destabilise the country, while some were sought as they “planned to seize power and plunge the country into chaos.”

A further check on the government’s website, Information Service of the Government of Burkina Faso, where information on previous coup attempts was posted, did not contain any press release or document that mentioned the arrest of presidential guards on May 19, 2024.

Similarly, Radio Télévision du Burkina, the country’s national broadcaster, did not mention such an incident.

Conclusion

The claim that a dozen presidential guards were arrested in Burkina Faso for planning to assassinate the president is false.

This report is produced for the DUBAWA 2024 Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking Fellowship in partnership with Daily Trust to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in Nigeria.