Old documentary clip falsely linked to Palm Sunday attack in Nigeria
- Published on April 17, 2026 at 11:40
- 3 min read
- By Oluseyi AWOJULUGBE, AFP Nigeria
Nigeria’s insecurity problem came into focus again on Palm Sunday in late March 2026 when gunmen opened fire on a crowd at a bar in Plateau state, leading to mob retaliation and more than 30 deaths. Following the incident, a video of a woman wailing on a grave was circulated with claims she lost her husband and son in the attack. However, the claim is false; the clip is an excerpt from a 2025 documentary that examined claims of a Christian genocide in Nigeria.
“Her son and husband have just been murdered by Islamic terrorists in Jos -Nigeria. Christian communities in Nigeria have been ravaged by Islamic terrorists where many innocent lives have been genocided (sic),” reads the caption of an X post published on March 30, 2026.
Shared more than 11,000 times, the video shows a woman sobbing on a mound of earth as a small crowd looks on. A man dressed in black appears to be interviewing the bystanders about what happened to her.
Comments under the post appear to sympathise with the woman and criticise the government for not effectively tackling the country’s perilous insecurity.
“She is a woman who woke up with a family and went to sleep alone. Plateau State. Nigeria. 2026. The world needs to see her pain. Its very painful (sic),” one user wrote.
"Violence against Christians in Nigeria is being downplayed, and that silence is dangerous. When leaders sugarcoat reality instead of confronting it, they risk allowing these attacks to become normalized," another commented.
Red Cross officials in Jos, the capital of Plateau state in Nigeria’s middle belt region, told AFP that at least 12 people were killed on March 29, 2026, when unidentified attackers opened fire at an establishment in the Anguwan Rukuba area of Jos North district. A mob retaliation to the incident increased the death toll to 33 (archived here).
However, the footage of the grieving widow shared online is unrelated to the Palm Sunday attack in Jos.
Documentary clip
The 90-second video posted on X includes the handle of an account called “@withchude” in the top right corner.
Keyword searches revealed “With Chude” is the name of a YouTube channel and podcast run by Nigerian journalist Chude Jideonwo.
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches of key frames extracted from the video and found that it was first published on December 12, 2025, on Jideonwo’s verified Facebook page (archived here).
"I wanted to know: Is there a genocide against Christians in Northern Nigeria? Beyond the hashtags, beyond the politics - what is happening to the people?," reads the post. "So I went. With my crew. To Plateau - the heart of the Middle Belt’s crisis. I sat with survivors. I visited graves. I listened to voices no one else hears."
Comparisons show the clips are exactly the same in content and duration.
Search results also show that the clip released by Jideonwo was a trailer for a longer documentary that he published on YouTube two days later (archived here).
The documentary, titled "Fulani herdsmen came to our church and set it ablaze with people inside," investigated claims of a Christian genocide in Nigeria.
In the documentary, the woman was identified as Keziah Chollom Danjuma, whose husband and four children were reportedly killed during an attack on the Rachas community in Barkin Ladi, Plateau state in early November 2025 (archived here).
Jideonwo, the man seen in the clip dressed in black, begins interviewing her around nine minutes into the documentary.
"When I heard the gunshots, I jumped up, carried the kids and we hid ourselves in different locations. They ransacked the entire house and they found the kids where I hid them," she said, narrating the incident.
"They asked the kids about their father's whereabouts, and the children said he ran away... One of them asked the kids to shut up or get killed. There was quietness and so in my head, I thought they let them go, I didn't realise they had killed them."
In November, US President Donald Trump designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern, alleging that radical Islamists were “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers” (archived here).
This was the result of lobbying by US officials claiming Christians in Africa's most populous country are facing a “genocide” -- a claim the Nigerian government denies (archived here).
A jihadist conflict that began in Nigeria in 2009 has killed over 40,000 people, displaced millions, and led to mass abductions of schoolchildren (archived here and here).
AFP Fact Check has debunked other claims about Nigeria’s insecurity here.
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