Images show suspected kidnapper’s house demolished in Nigeria, not in Kenya
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 11, 2023 at 13:36
- 2 min read
- By James OKONG'O, AFP Kenya
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“An angry man in Bungoma County of Kenya demolished a house that he built for his girlfriend's parents after they rejected his marriage proposal,” reads a post published on Facebook on July 2, 2023.
The pictures show a tractor demolishing a house.
Bungoma is a county in Kenya located some 400 kilometres west of the country’s capital Nairobi.
The images and claim were also shared on TikTok.
The same photos were published in a separate Facebook post claiming they showed a house recently demolished in South Sudan.
But the claims are false.
Nigeria demolition
Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check found that the photo has been online since at least June 2021.
It was published by several Nigerian news websites that reported on the demolition in Benue state here and here (archived here and here). According to the articles, the state government applied an anti-kidnapping law to authorise the demolition.
News of the demolition as well as the pictures were published by the BBC on its vernacular Facebook pages in Nigeria here and here (archived here and here).
The BBC credited the photos to Nigerian-based journalist Raphael Akume, who confirmed to AFP Fact Check that he took the pictures.
“The pictures show government officials knocking down a suspected kidnapper's house in Benue state in 2021,” Akume said.
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