Video of people crossing collapsed bridge with ropes is from Sudan, not Nigeria
- Published on September 11, 2025 at 09:44
- 3 min read
- By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria
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A video published on Facebook on August 9, 2025, and shared more than 2,000 times, shows a woman crossing a collapsed bridge on a zip-line.
“This is not a scene from a movie; this is the harsh reality of Nigeria. Every day, people cross this river, risking their lives,” the video’s narrator says. “There is no bridge, only a weak rope to support them. The situation is so dire that to get from the village to the city, one must hang onto that rope, swinging between hope and death.”
Comments under the post were mixed: while some users doubted the post’s authenticity, others seemed to believe it and lamented the state of the country.
“Giant of Africa, why...where is the oil money?” one user commented.
Earlier in June, heavy rains destroyed three bridges in the Mokwa area of Niger state in Nigeria’s north-central region (archived here).
AFP reported that at least 150 people died (archived here).
However, the video showing a woman using a rope to cross a collapsed bridge was not taken in Nigeria.
Sudan flooding
Results from a reverse image search using Google Lens led to a video posted on Facebook by UNICEF Sudan in September 2024 (archived here).
At the 10-second mark, the video shows a different view of the same partially collapsed bridge, this time with a man zip-lining across the river. This indicates that the collapsed bridge is located in Sudan, not Nigeria.
Another photo posted on X by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) shows the same collapsed bridge and identifies it as “a critical bridge connecting West, Central & S. Darfur” (archived here).
An online search using the keywords “bridge+collapse+west+central+south+darfur” led to a news report from August 2024 by Radio Dabanga, which operates in Sudan (archived here).
According to the report, four critical bridges collapsed due to flooding, including the Azum Valley Bridge, located over the Wadi Barei river.
The Azum Valley bridge linked states in western, central, and southern Darfur.
AFP Fact Check geolocated the bridge and found that its structure and surrounding landscape match what is shown in the video.
The latest satellite imagery captured on Google Earth is from May 5, 2023 – months before the bridge collapsed.
AFP Fact Check has debunked other false claims related to the climate and floods here.
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