Post makes false claim about celebration of Children’s Day in Nigeria

“Do you know why they made 27th May ‘The Children's Day?’ It was on the 27th of May that the consultative forum assembly in Enugu sat together and gave Ojukwu the mandate to declare BIAFRA, so they made 27th May Children's Day to take away the importance of that day,” reads the Facebook post published on May 28, 2023.

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A screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on June 7, 2023

The account behind the post boasts more than 71,000 followers and has a history of publishing content sympathetic to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist group pushing for the independence of Nigeria’s southeastern region.

It credited the claim, which has been shared 120 times, to the group’s detained leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

With a history of spreading disinformation, IPOB supporters have been the subject of several debunks by AFP Fact Check.

Ojukwu in the post refers to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Igbo army commander who made the unilateral declaration of independence in the southeast that triggered Nigeria's 1967 civil war (archived here).

But the claim that Children’s Day is celebrated in Nigeria to erase part of Biafran history is false.

Formerly Empire Day

A keyword search for “history of Children’s Day in Nigeria” led to an academic paper by Nigerian professor Saheed Aderinto and published in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History in 2018.

Aderinto said in the paper that May 27 was marked as “Empire Day” in the country before it became independent in 1960 (archived here).

“It was a significant symbol of imperial domination, decolonised from the late 1950s to align with postcolonial ideals of self-determination and nation-building,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the United Nations (UN) established Children’s Day in 1954 (archived here). While the international body marks it on November 20, many countries celebrate the day on different dates, with Nigerian settling for May 27 in 1964 -- about three years before Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared Biafra’s secession from Nigeria (archived here).