Post misleadingly claims Nigerian helicopter crashed in Niger

“Breaking News; Niger Set Down Nigeria Helicopter (sic),” reads a Facebook post published by a Ghanaian news blog on August 16, 2023.

Image

A screenshot showing the misleading post, taken on August 28, 2023

Shared more than 400 times, the post includes a 16-minute video with a narrator speaking Twi, a language common to Ghana. The narrator claims the Nigerien army shot down a Nigerian helicopter trying to enter its airspace.

“They have blasted the helicopter and destroyed it completely,” the narrator says, then asks if Ghana should be part of the proposed ECOWAS military intervention in Niger.

Footage played on a loop shows two fighter jets flying in tandem and a contingent of soldiers, but no helicopter.

Troops led by former presidential guard commander General Abdourahamane Tiani ousted Niger’s democratically-elected leader Mohamed Bazoum on July 26, 2023 (archived here).

ECOWAS, chaired by Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, gave the military regime a seven-day ultimatum to reinstate Bazoum or risk reprisal.

After the deadline passed on August 6, 2023, leaders of ECOWAS ordered the activation of a “standby force” (archived here ).

During a subsequent meeting in Ghana on August 18, 2023, ECOWAS confirmed it had agreed to a “D-Day” for possible military intervention in Niger to restore civil rule if diplomatic efforts failed (archived here).

The African Union also suspended Niger in response to the coup.

But the claim that Niger shot down a Nigerian helicopter is misleading.

State, not country

A Nigerian Air Force MI-171 helicopter crashed on August 14, 2023, near Chukuba Village in Nigeria’s northcentral Niger state.

A total of 36 military personnel died, according to Nigerian military spokesman Edward Buba (archived here).

Buba said the helicopter was on a mission to evacuate dead and wounded soldiers who had been ambushed in Niger state.

“As a result of this, there was a need for casualty evacuation whereby the air force helicopter was dispatched while that operation was on and inbound to Kaduna, the helicopter crashed,” Buba told reporters.

The Nigerian military regularly conducts operations in northern Nigeria, which has long been plagued by insurgents and bandits.

Insurgents claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter, but the military said it is still investigating the cause of the crash (archived here). So far, no authenticated images of the crash site have been released.