Aminu Sale
A shocking claim from 2018 alleging a Nigerian football player’s sacking in Slovenia tied to an illicit pregnancy has improbably resurfaced despite decisive debunking years prior. The rumor, asserting football striker Donatus Edafe was dismissed from his club for impregnating the leader’s daughter, has circulated recently across blogs and social media in Nigeria.
As remarkably implausible as this story may seem, various posts and messages over the last month spread word again that Edafe was terminated by second-division side Nogometno društvo Gorica over carnal affairs with the president’s child. Our fact-checker undertook investigation tracing back the rumor’s tangled origins and pathway to present-day revival.
In initially trying to substantiate this bold allegation, our fact-check explores back to contemporaneous 2018 reporting on Edafe’s departure from the Slovenian club. As covered by that nation’s sports journalists, club officials stated purely “footballing reasons” for releasing the player over perceived inadequacies on-pitch.
The following year though, whispers began swirling of a supposed scandalous cover-up motivation. Anonymous online speculation swelled regarding supposed affairs, pregnancy and ensuing dismissal specifically due to Edafe soiling the club leader’s daughter and family name.
With tongues wagging, the man himself went on record to refute what he termed a wholly fictitious account of events. Aside from asserting his firing occurred due to subpar performance alone, his statement notably called into question whether this key character – the center of the rumor – even existed at all.
Edafe claimed unambiguously that to his knowledge, the club president had no daughter. This firmly gutted the crux of the conjectures spreading about secret trysts and subsequent termination. With the cause for his release verified unambiguously and the damning plot device disputed outright, this seemed the death knell for an unproven tall tale.
Yet against all logic and available information, this exact story has crept back to prominence half a decade later. Our fact-checker investigated recent posts and messages relaying it to uncover what sparked the inexplicable resurgence…
The Renewed Rumor:
While the initial rumor floated through blogs and forums before being dispelled, this modern circulation spreads via Nigerian Instagram fan pages and WhatsApp groups. The same word-for-word story gets copied without context or update across these platforms to receptive new eyes.
In tracking the accounts and sites seeded with the revived claim, Fact-check discovered no acknowledgment of its proven falsehood years ago or subsequent thorough debunking. In none of of the recent posts does it mention the unambiguous public statements dismissing the rumor from both the affected club and maligned player.
Instead, the claim gets blithely spread as breaking news by accounts seeming to assume at face value the accuracy of such an incendiary allegation without critical scrutiny. Thisusted revival spotlighted a worrying reality where salacious claims circulate eternally regardless of factual standing when fed eagerly through social pipelines.
So in review, our fact-checker pieced together theTrail of Rumor and Return:
– Nigerian footballer released from Slovenian club in 2018
– Rumors spread in 2019 of scandal cover-up reason
– Club and player both refute rumor publicly
– Claim resurfaces unchanged on social media weeks ago
The Verdict:
In concise terms, no credible evidence exists supporting this recycled claim in literal contradiction to direct public statements debunking it. Therefore after full investigation and timeline analysis, Ripples Nigeria judges the footballer pregnancy firing allegation as unequivocally FALSE.
This exhaustive fact-check stands as a case study in stubborn fictions gaining footing when detached from truth and context. To stem misinformation toxicity, responsible platforms and communities must value objectivity over gossip to prevent already dispelled lies resurrecting endlessly as here.
