Posts falsely claim video shows burial of Nigeria’s former president Buhari

Published on July 25, 2025 at 16:41
3 min read
By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria

Former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, who governed from 2015 to 2023, died in London and was buried at home in July 2025. A TikTok video claimed to show his state funeral taking place, but the post is false; the footage was taken before Buhari died and shows a funeral for the mother of a state governor in the north of Nigeria.

The video was published on TikTok on July 13, 2025, and shows a corpse wrapped in red fabric being placed on the ground with a large crowd gathered around.

Photos of Buhari and “RIP”, short for “rest in peace”, are overlaid on the video, as well as a sentence written in Hausa, “Allah yamaka rahama Baba Buhari”, meaning “May God have mercy on you, Baba Buhari”.

Screenshot of the false TikTok post, taken on July 21, 2025

The video, shared more than 4,300 times, appeared in a Facebook post dated July 6, 2025 -- before Buhari died at the age of 82 in a London clinic on July 13, 2025 (archived here).

He was Nigeria’s military head of state in the 1980s and then, as a self-described “converted democrat”, served two terms as president from 2015 to 2023.

However, the viral video does not show Buhari’s funeral.

Old video

Given his status as a former president, Buhari was given a state funeral with military honours as a reflection of his career.

AFP reported that his remains were draped in the green-white-green Nigerian flag, different from the red material visible in the viral video (archived here).

Photos from Buhari’s funeral published by local media also show the distinct green-white-green flag (archived here).

Screenshot showing Buhari’s remains draped with the Nigerian flag, published by local newspaper, TheCable on July 15, 2025

AFP Check conducted a reverse image search on keyframes extracted from the video.

This led to a video published on Facebook by a journalist four months before Buhari’s death. The caption, based on a press statement from the Katsina State Government House and dated March 23, 2025, said the video showed the burial of Hajiya Safara'u Umar Radda, the mother of Katsina state governor, Malam Dikko Umaru Radda (archived here).

Screenshot showing the similarities between the video in the false Facebook post (left) and the March 2025 video

Photos published on Facebook by Katsina State Television, the state’s official broadcaster, also match the scenes in the video (archived here).

Comparison shot matching the features seen in the March 2025 video to photos published by the Katsina state broadcaster

More AFP Fact Check debunks related to Nigeria can be found here.

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