A video showing burning tyres on a street has surfaced online alongside a claim that it was from a clash between traditional worshippers and youths in Ogun State over the protest in Nigeria starting August 1.
The narrator in the video claimed that the traditional Oro worshippers wanted to celebrate the festival in order to stop the protest in Ikenne, Ogun State leading to resistance from the youths who insist that the protest must hold.
READ: Video of February demonstration in Ibadan used to depict planned August protest
An X user, @dannyi05900085 posted the video with a caption that read:
“Oro festival stopped by the hungry and angry youths in Ogun state.”
The video has garnered about 400,000 views, with over 2,700 reposts, more than 5,000 likes and 300 comments as of July 31, 2024.
Another X user, @nwaadaz posted the same video with another caption thus:
“Happening now as Angry youths in Ogun state allegedly stop traditionalists performing of the oro festival ahead of the upcoming protest.”
The video has been widely circulated across multiple social media platforms.
THE ‘END BAD GOVERNANCE’ PROTEST
Earlier, Nigerians planned to stage a nationwide protest starting today, August 1 till August 10, tagged “10 days of rage,” or “End Bad Governance in Nigeria” to express their displeasure over the country’s soaring cost of living.
The Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had scrapped a popular fuel subsidy and devalued the local currency, the naira, thus causing a spiral hike in food and commodity prices.
Nigeria’s overall inflation was in June 2024 at its highest level in 28 years – more than 34 per cent with food inflation much higher, according to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG). This is in addition to widespread insecurity and climate change affecting farmers’ ability to grow crops.
This is why the hashtags: #EndBadGovernance,#EndBGIN, #EndBadGovernance2024 and#EndBadGovernanceinNigeria have been trending on multiple social media platforms and Google Trends for days.
CLAIM
Video shows clash between traditional worshippers and youths in Ogun State over the protest.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING, as the video showed a youth clash in Ikenne community following local government’s ban on celebration of the annual Oro festival in the community earlier.
Contrary to the X claims, the video showed violence in Ikenne, Ogun State, due to the insistence of youths to celebrate the annual Oro festival despite the ban by the state government.
An earlier version of the viral video with the accurate narrative can be seen here in this Daily Trust report.
The local government council, which is the consenting authority, had banned the festival following the building tension in the community over the royal battle to forestall a breach of peace during the festival, Daily Trust reported.
Despite this, some youths stormed the streets on Saturday, July 27, 2024 to protest against the ban. The youths reportedly burned tyres on the major road and eventually clashed with police operatives in the community leading to the arrest of about 20 of them.
Also, there are beliefs that some Nigerian states are planning to use traditional worshippers to prevent people from protesting on street today, especially in Southwestern part of the country. However, this has been denied by the Lagos State Government.
Even though the planned protest over economic hardship commences nationwide today, The FactCheckHub has identified various instances where unrelated videos were falsely used to depict the ongoing August protest. The ICIR is providing LIVE UPDATES from the scene of the protests across the country here.
READ ALSO: Old video of youths protesting at Emir of Ilorin’s palace circulates online
Recall that The FactCheckHub had earlier debunked a similar video showing some youths holding placards and burning tyres which was shared with a claim that the protest had commenced in Kano. We established that the video is unrelated to the protest.
We also established that another video which was used to depict the protest shows a demonstration that had earlier occurred over two months ago in Ibadan, Oyo State.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows a clash between traditional worshippers and youths in Ogun State over the August protest is MISLEADING; the video shows protest by some Ikenne youths over the banned Oro festival and unrelated to today’s protest.
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.
