On December 4, 2023, a Facebook user named Nweke Makojo Global claimed that there’s an ongoing construction of a skyscraper in Onueke, Ebonyi state, Nigeria.
The post has an image of a tall building with scaffold.
“The ongoing construction of skyscraper in Onueke Ebonyi state,” the caption reads.
As of December 8, the post has garnered over 20,000 likes, more than 5,000 comments and 460 shares.
A skyscraper, according to Britannica.com, is a very tall multistoried building. The term skyscraper originally applied to buildings of 10 to 20 stories, but by the late 20th century the term was used to describe high-rise buildings of unusual height, generally greater than 40 or 50 stories.
CLAIM
Image shows an ongoing construction of a skyscraper in Onueke, Ebonyi state.
THE FINDINGS
Checks show that the claim is MISLEADING.
To verify the source of the image, this journalist subjected the image to Reverse Image Search on Yandex, Google Lens and TinEye.
The results showed that the image has been on the internet since at least 2012.
The image was used in an article published on October 23, 2012, by the Traveling Trini to illustrate a bamboo scaffolding.
The same image had also surfaced on Pinterest.com, where it was attributed to bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong, China as seen here.
Also, the photo is published on Adobe.com as a stock image as seen here, with a caption that reads: “Building in Hong Kong is under reconstruction, surrounded by scaffolding from bamboo….”
Similarly, it was also posted on 9gag.com in December 2021 and referenced by an Instagram user, @redhongyi in another post published in January 2023 here.
When the image was subjected to further Google search using some keywords, it did not made the list of infrastructural projects listed in Ebonyi state as seen here.
Lastly, a geo-location search of Onueke in the state aimed at identifying such structure also did not show any skyscraper in the community.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the image shows ongoing construction of a skyscraper in Onueke, Ebonyi state is MISLEADING; as findings revealed that it has been published multiple times and referenced as a bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong.
* This fact-check was written by Shereefdeen Ahmad, a fellow of the ICIR’s Countering Misinformation and Promoting Media Literacy project, supported by the German Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria.
