On March 24, 2024, an X user (formerly Twitter) posted a one-minute, thirty-second video with the caption “See a country that has police and army! Kidnapped school children in the hands of kidnappers and forced to go naked – boys and girls. This is insanity! Do we have a government in Nigeria ? This is wrong, oh”.
In the footage, armed men could be heard ordering the students to remove their clothes totally, raise their hands, or be shot while the kids plead for mercy.
There were various reactions from X users to the seeming identification of students removing their uniforms as ordered by the armed men.
Screenshot of the X post
Claim: Video shows armed men forcing students to strip naked in Nigeria?
Verification
The CDD War Room traced the video to a tweet, which depicts an incident that happened in the Republic of Cameroon, Central Africa, on January 12, 2022.
On January 13, 2022, the media reported that armed separatists had stripped and molested students in Bwitingi-Buea, the South West Region of Cameroon.
In the video circulated online, students can be heard begging for mercy. The incident took place beside Bwitingi, Baptist church, a locality in Buea. This happened when the armed separatists, in an attempt to prevent the 2022 edition of the Africa Cup of Nation matches (AFCON) from being played, launched an attack during which they coerced the students to strip.
CDD War Room recalls that Cameroon hosted the African Cup of Nations in 2022. The Anglophone separatists were reportedly fighting in Cameroon’s western region to break away from the majority French-speaking nation. They had vowed to disrupt the continent’s football showpiece in Buea and Limbe. The two cities hosted football fans, players, and match officials for group matches involving Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, and Tunisia.
Similarly, the results of the Google reverse image show that the earlier version of the video was posted on ₦airaland Forum on January 14, 2022 and was posted on a Facebook page on January 13, 2022, indicating that the Ambazonia terrorists attacked a school in Cameroon. Also, the incident was reported by Voice of America (VON) on January 14, 2022.
VERDICT: MISLEADING
CDD War Room checks indicates that the viral video showing students on school premises kidnapped by armed men and stripped naked does not depict an incident in Nigeria; the video has its origin in an incident involving armed separatists and students, which happened during the AFCON hosted by Cameroon in 2022.
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