Misleading posts circulate old visuals of Nigerian police protesting over outstanding pay

Former Nigerian presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore tweeted the footage with a claim that the “#PoliceStrike action has started in Yobe”, a state in the northeast of Nigeria. 

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Screenshot showing an archived version of the tweet on Wayback Machine

The video shows a demonstration of armed policemen shooting into the air, singing songs, and calling for presidential intervention. 

Sowore’s tweet was published on March 25, 2022, a day after Nigerian daily newspaper The Guardian reported that Usman, the country’s Inspector-General of Police (IGP), had warned his officers to shelve mooted plans for industrial action.

“Policemen saying ‘IGP Must Go’,” reads the rest of Sowore’s now-deleted (but archived) tweet.

Usman is presumably the IGP mentioned by Sowore, although he is not named in the tweet. 

The 95 seconds of footage, which was also republished in this Facebook post, features the logo of Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television in the top left corner.

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Screenshot taken on March 31, 2022, showing the misleading Facebook post

Four screenshots taken from the footage accompany a similar claim in this Facebook post published on March 26, 2022. This time, Usman is named.

“Breaking News;  Nigeria Police on a peaceful protest over non payment of salary by IGP Usman Alkali Baba (sic),” reads the caption on the Facebook post, shared more than 240 times.

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Screenshot taken on March 30, 2022, showing the misleading Facebook post

The post adds that “their peaceful protest” was about “expressing their ill feeling over injustice melted against them by [the] IG of police”. 

However, there is no evidence of police recently protesting in Yobe or any other part of Nigeria, despite the rumours of a possible strike over welfare benefits.

 Furthermore, the protest footage is old; it was filmed in 2018.

Old protest in Borno

AFP Fact Check found the original version of the footage on the YouTube page of Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television. It shows a demonstration in 2018 by Nigerian police officers in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, over unpaid allowances.

“Police officers in Borno State have taken to the streets of Maiduguri, the state capital today (Monday) in a protest,” reads Channels Television’s headline description of the video uploaded to YouTube on July 2, 2018. At the time, Ibrahim Idris was IGP.

The video’s caption further states: “The officers who are protesting over about five months of unpaid allowances barricaded major roads around the police headquarters [in Borno state].”

Nigeria’s police force confirmed the video was old and dismissed the claim of a recent protest as false.

“The video … depicting mobile police officers protesting was an incident that occurred on 2nd July, 2018 in Maiduguri, Borno State (sic),” police said in a statement published on Twitter on March 26, 2022.

“The public is hereby advised to kindly disregard the video and stop the spread of disinformation.”