Posts falsely claims former Nigerian minister’s car was stoned during campaign

“This politics is now scary ooo. He was disgraced and molested. He was not even allow to do any campaign in sagamu, he and his campaign team were chased out of sagamu. An ingrate, the evil he did to Tinubu will be pursuing him and will not be politically recognized any longer (sic),” read the caption of an X post published on August 17, 2025.

At the top of the 28-second video, an overlaid caption read: “Aregbesola got stone at Ogun state”.

"Sagamu" refers to a major town in the state.

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Screenshot showing the false post, taken August 18, 2025

Aregbesola, whose full name is Rauf Aregbesola, was the immediate past interior minister and long-time ally of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. He served as Lagos commissioner for works (1999–2007) before becoming governor of Osun state (2010–2018) (archived here and here). 

After falling out with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Tinubu due to a local leadership conflict and his suspension from the party, Aregbesola formally defected in July 2025, accepting the role of interim national secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC),  the platform adopted by the opposition coalition for the 2027 elections (archived here, here and here).

A few days after Aregbesola was appointed as ADC secretary, local daily Punch Newspaper published a video here and here showing jubilant supporters welcoming him back to Lagos from the nation’s capital, Abuja (archived here and here).

AFP found no official reports that objects were thrown at him as he arrived in Lagos.

The footage in the X post was also shared here on Facebook alongside a similar false claim. It shows a convoy of vehicles speeding through a crowd as people hurl objects at it. 

The post, reshared more than 280 times, was published by an account called “Hon Kunle” — a self-acclaimed network engineer with over 2,000 followers. A review of the account’s feed shows it shares posts solely on Nigerian politics.

#EndSARS rage

Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the X clip, AFP found the original video published on YouTube on October 17, 2020 (archived here). 

The full video, published by Nigerian news broadcaster ChannelsTV, has a caption reading “#EndSARS Protests: Governor Oyetola's Convoy Attacked By Hoodlums”.

“Governor Oyetola”, mentioned in the caption, refers to the former Osun state governor, Gboyega Oyetola. 

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Graphics showing the X video (right) and the YouTube video (left)

Oyetola is Tinubu’s cousin and currently serves as the Marine and Blue Economy Minister after a four-year single tenure as Osun governor. He succeeded Aregbesola in 2018. 

#EndSARS was a social media campaign against police brutality that later blossomed into the largest anti-government demonstrations in the modern history of Africa’s most populous nation (archived here).

Using the keywords from the caption of the YouTube video to conduct searches, AFP found multiple reports about the incident involving Oyetola.

According to the local publisher DailyTrust, Oyetola described the incident as an assassination attempt on his life by thugs who had hijacked the peaceful demonstration (archived here).