Photos show American boys, not Nigerian separatist leader’s son
- Published on February 28, 2024 at 13:21
- 4 min read
- By Samad UTHMAN, AFP Africa
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Members of the Nigerian separatist group the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have frequently used disinformation to burnish the image of their imprisoned leader Nnamdi Kanu. Recent social media posts claimed to share photos showing Kanu’s young son receiving a prize for being a science prodigy. But the claim is false; the photos were lifted from old US news reports and show two different boys with no relation to Kanu.
“In a remarkable display of brilliance and academic prowess, the son of renowned activist and leader Nnamdi Kanu has achieved an extraordinary feat. At just 7 years old, this young prodigy has claimed the title of the best science student in the United Kingdom, surpassing competitors from the United States, Canada, Australia, and 15 other countries,” reads the post shared on Facebook by “Igbo Times Magazine” on February 14, 2024.
The post features four photos. One shows a young boy wearing a red and white headband standing in a street, while another shows a family with a beaming young boy who appears to be holding a certificate.
The remaining two are stock photos of Kanu and military medals.
An X account called “Emeka Oragwu” shared the same photos with a variant of the claim, alleging that Kanu’s son emerged as the “world’s smartest kid at age 7” and “received $500k from the US government” in an unnamed competition.
The account added that Kanu’s son was victorious after inventing a “mini-microscope that can see other planets 100 million kilometres away from earth”.
In the comments, many users doubted the outlandish claims.
The post, shared 900 times, credited Igbo Times as its source.
Similar claims were also published here, here and here.
Kanu’s incarceration
Kanu, the leader of IPOB, is currently facing terrorism charges in Nigeria.
He was first detained in 2015 before being released on bail. Kanu fled Nigeria in 2017, but in June 2021 he was rearrested in Kenya and extradited to Nigeria, where he remains incarcerated.
His supporters regularly use disinformation in their campaigns for the independence of Nigeria’s southeast region, including to perpetuate Kanu’s larger-than-life image.
Nigerian news outlet The Cable reported in January 2016 that several months after Kanu’s first arrest, his wife gave birth to a boy (archived here), who would today be eight years old.
Misinformation record
The Igbo Times, credited with the claims, is notorious for sharing disinformation on both its website and on Facebook. It has been the subject of several debunks by AFP Fact Check (here, here, and here).
The transparency record of the “Igbo Times Magazine” Facebook account shows it was created on July 28, 2022, as “Dr Yusuf Datti Ahmed” -- the name of Peter Obi’s running mate for Nigeria’s Labour Party in the 2023 presidential elections.
The page changed its title to “Dr Yusuf Datti Ahmed ‘Fan Page” on August 1, 2022, and finally to “Igbo Times Magazine” on October 31, 2022.
Not Kanu’s son
Using reverse image searches, AFP Fact Check found that the two images of young boys had been online long before the Igbo Times claimed they were Kanu’s son.
American news outlet Newsweek published the photo of the boy standing in the street more than five years ago, on June 6, 2018 (archived here).
The report identified him as 10-year-old Michael Thomas Jr, who was arrested and handcuffed by police officers in Chicago (archived here). The arresting officers were found to have violated policy by restraining the boy for “an extended period of time”.
In April 2023, CNBC published the photo of the boy holding a certificate in a report about a nine-year-old Nigerian-American described as “one of the youngest people in the U.S. to earn a high school diploma” (archived here).
CNBC reported at the time that the boy, identified as David Balogun, had already finished a semester at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. He was pictured with his parents and sister.
Balogun, meaning “war chief”, is a Yoruba name from southwest Nigeria.
There have been no credible reports of a son of Kanu’s winning any international science competition.
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