FAKE NEWS: Newly Wedded Kenyan Couple Committing Suicide Goes Viral In Africa, Not True

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Kenya

Events

 

A fake story about a newly wedding couple by the name of Mr and Mrs Odipo committing suicide because their wedding fees was so high has caught fire in Africa. According to websites that reported the story, they have reposted the content from Kenya-today.co.ke.

The story reported a Kenyan couple reportedly took their lives after having a lavish wedding in anticipation of receiving generous gifts and cash, but were given a rude awakening when wealthy friends, relatives and associates gave little funds rather leaving bests wishes and flowers for them.

Kenya-today.co.ke reports that Mr. & Mrs. Odipo saddled with the debt committed suicide four days after the Ksh7.9 million or $78,000 wedding. A reported suicide note left behind by the couple reads: “We are embarrassed & ashamed that we could not start our new life in happiness because you people did not make us happy as we expected.”

As juicy as it is to repost the story, we began to do what we expect most sites to do before publishing a story, RESEARCH. There is no supposed Mr and Mrs Odipo. There is only one supposed image of the couple floating the net. Surely an incident as big as this will have had the whole social media flooded with various images from various angles, be it their wedding images or even just normal images of the couple.

There is no major network that has reported it. And we don’t mean major interms of western, but no major network even in Kenya has touched into this story. We contact associates in Kenya who were unaware of the story.

The details of the reports by all the African blogs from Ghana to Kenya that have published it were very vague. ie.”the wedding was held at a five-star hotel” Which 5 star hotel?

They had with “special guests, VVIPs and VIPs” which guests if they were VVIP?

Worst of all which couple commits suicide together? This is Africa, poverty is not a stranger, and if anyone is going to commit suicide over it, only the man would do so.