A video showing law enforcement officers beating civilians is being shared on Facebook and WhatsApp in Nigeria, with claims that it shows Nigerian soldiers beating citizens while enforcing the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.
To curb the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered an initial 14-day lockdown on March 29 of two states -- Lagos and Ogun -- and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which includes the capital Abuja., Police officers and soldiers were\xa0deployed to enforce the lockdown., A careful look at the footage shows that the officers in the video are wearing vests marked “police”.\xa0In addition, the vehicle used to take the injured men away is marked “police”., We used the video verification tool WeVerify to carry out reverse image searches and found that the video had existed on the internet before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Four separate videos, uploaded to YouTube on September 2, 2019, are archived\xa0here, here, here and here., On the longer versions of this video from the YouTube channels, the following phone numbers are visible on one of the police vans: 191 and 18555. Both are emergency lines for\xa0the Ghana Police Service., In recent weeks Ghana police have used their official Twitter account to point out false social media posts, among them the video of the beatings, saying very little about the visuals except that the footage was taken in 2013., We have seen some videos which are not related to the ongoing COVID operation trending. We are sharing with you the details of those videos so that you all share with family and friends.#operationCOVIDsafety pic.twitter.com/nfnS2ROwcU, "With this information, AFP searched further and, indeed, found an even longer version of the video, with a caption that it\xa0shows Ghanas police assaulting “land guards”. We archived the video here.", News reports\xa0here and here\xa0in the Ghanaian media at the time substantiate what happened in 2013, proving that the incident never took place in Nigeria for reasons linked to COVID-19., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This is an old video showing police officers in Ghana | AFP Fact Check