Old harassment video resurfaces amid Nigeria’s World Cup qualifier loss

“Wow, explosive confrontation. Brave and confident. A man confronted Nigerian players in Vienna and bashed them that they should be ashamed of themselves representing a terrorist ExNigeria & its govt. Nigeria is a crime itself”, reads the caption of an X post shared on November 16, 2025. 

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Screenshot showing a post lacking context, taken November 21, 2025

The post, which has been shared more than 2,500 times, shows female Nigerian athletes being verbally assaulted inside a moving bus by the person filming them.  

“And you people are representing a terrorist organisation, a terrorist government. You Nigerian youth should be very ashamed of yourselves,” the narrator says at the beginning of the video, in which he mentions they are in Vienna, Austria. 

He goes on to accuse the team of representing a government that is “kidnapping its citizens” and “killing youths”.

The exchange escalates when some of the players and other passengers stand up to confront the narrator, who, in turn, threatens to inform the police if they touch him.

“I will call the police on you. This is not Nigeria,” he says as he continues hurling insults at the players. "And you're representing a terrorist organisation, calling yourselves Eagle's players".

The Eagles refers to Nigeria's men’s national football team, the Super Eagles.

The over two-minute video was published by an X account called “Gozie007”. The account bio bears the description: “The rising Sun Biafra child. Free MNK”.

MNK stands for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the secessionist leader advocating for an independent Biafra state in south-eastern Nigeria. Kanu was recently sentenced to life imprisonment by a Nigerian court on terrorism charges after years in detention (archived here).

The account uses Kanu’s image on its profile, and a review of its feed shows that it primarily publishes content about Kanu and Biafra, along with posts critical of different tribes in the country. 

The clip was shared the same day Nigeria lost to the DRC in the African playoff final held in Rabat, Morocco, for a final spot in the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The match was played by the national men’s team, the Super Eagles.

The video has also been shared elsewhere on Instagram, claiming the incident happened in Switzerland. 

However, the video showing the women’s team being verbally assaulted is unrelated to the recent match. 

2021 footage 

Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video, AFP Fact Check traced the footage to a post published by Nigerian newspaper TheCable on July 20, 2021, on its X account (archived here).

The post is captioned: “VIDEO: 'You represent a terrorist government' -- Nigerian man harasses Super Falcons on public bus in Austria”.

In Nigeria, the men's national football team is known as the Super Eagles, while the women's is called the Super Falcons.

The local newspaper also published an article about the incident, reporting that it occurred on a public transit bus in Austria’s capital Vienna (archived here).

According to TheCable, the national women's team was in Vienna for an eight-day training camp in preparation for a continental tournament held in September that year in honour of Nigeria’s former first lady, Aisha Buhari.

Other local media outlets also reported on the incident and shared the video in question (archived here and here).