Video of Trump encouraging anti-government protests in Nigeria was digitally altered
- Published on August 28, 2024 at 09:59
- 4 min read
- By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria
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“Nigerians, wake up, it’s time,” reads the caption on a TikTok video. “Donald has told us to do so, and we have to do it.”
Shared more than 18,000 times since it was published on July 27, 2024, the post claims to show Trump urging protesters in Nigeria to get behind a series of street demonstrations scheduled for the first week in August.
“I advise the Nigerian youths to protest on the first of August for their own good, do not listen to Tinubu,” Trump appears to say in the clip. “The Nigerian government wants to take away the rights of protesting from the citizens of Nigeria. I feel sorry for Nigerian youths. I wish them the best on this protest, Nigeria has to change.”
The video was originally shared on X and incorporated into the TikTok post with a photo showing Trump smiling over the shoulder of Nigeria’s former president Muhammadu Buhari as he signs a document.
Anti-government protests
August 1 marked the beginning of the demonstrations dubbed #EndBadGovernanceinNigeria, which saw thousands of people throng the streets to protest the rising cost of living and government policies (archived here).
Africa’s most populous country is suffering its worst economic crisis in a generation following reforms brought in last year by leader Bola Tinubu.
Food inflation is now over 40% and the price of petrol has tripled.
According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 21 people were killed by police during the protests, but security forces denied responsibility (archived here).
However, the claim that Trump publicly sided with protesters days before the deadly demonstrations began is false.
Trump 2017 interview
Using the InVid We-Verify tool, we extracted keyframes from the TikTok clip and conducted a reverse image search.
The result led to a seven-year-old NBC interview with Trump when he was still president (archived here).
During the 13-minute exclusive interview broadcast on May 12, 2017, Trump said he was preparing to fire then FBI director James Comey.
He did not mention Nigeria once -- and could not have expressed support for the August anti-government protests anyway as they only took place seven years later.
This points to the audio being created by an AI tool, which AFP Fact Check traced in a previous debunk of the same video.
The video generator offers templates of famous people. The creator simply adds a text of what they want the celebrity to say.
AFP Fact Check also noted both the altered clip and the NBC video show Trump wearing the same, blue-striped tie and US flag pin on the left lapel of his navy suit jacket.
Comparison screenshots of TikTok video (left) and the NBC interview in 2017
Meanwhile, the photo of Trump and Nigeria’s former leader was originally shared on Buhari’s verified Facebook account during a working visit to the US in 2018.
Altered audio
AFP Fact Check extracted the audio from the altered video and ran it through Loccus.ai — an audio tool that looks for specific forensic traces left by voice generators.
The result showed a 98-percent probability the audio was generated with an AI tool.
AFP Fact Check has debunked viral social media posts containing AI-generated audio such as here and here.
We created this useful guide with tips to identify AI-generated content.
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