Video posts falsely claim floods in Nigeria

Nigeria has been ravaged by floods — the worst in a decade — which have claimed lives and destroyed farmlands. Social media accounts have shared footage of what they claim features incidents linked to the natural disaster. Those circulating the clips include popular Nigerian actress Dakore Egbuson-Akande, who published several videos on Instagram, saying they showed flood scenes from the Niger Delta region. However, AFP Fact Check found that three of the clips were old and unrelated.

Egbuson-Akande posted six clips on her Instagram account “dakoreea” on October 22, 2022.

“Horrific scenes out of many parts of Nigeria and the Niger Delta this season and my heart bleeds for my country Nigeria… (sic),” reads the post, which has received more than 7,500 likes from the star’s 1.4 million followers.

While most of the videos indeed show current events in Nigeria, AFP Fact Check found that three of them were old and unrelated.

Old video from Pakistan

The first video in the slideshow features a white sports utility vehicle caught in a torrent. At one point, a passenger tries to open a door to escape but the vehicle is swept away and completely submerged.

A screenshot from the post, taken on November 1, 2022

Using the InVID-WeVerify tool, AFP Fact Check ran several reverse image searches on keyframes from the video. This helped us trace the clip to an earlier version published on YouTube on January 29, 2017.

The video’s caption reads: “Car swept away in raging rainwater during heavy flooding, Chaman Balochistan, Pakistan”. News blogs also reported the incident here and here.

Chaman is situated on the north-western border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The town has witnessed floods in recent times —in August 2022, two dams collapsed after torrential rainfall. Homes, crops and farmlands were destroyed.

Dam overflow in India

The second clip shows an overflowing dam. A male narrator claims that “this dam that is causing this menace in Nigeria is a Cameroonian dam that is called Legdo, it was built in 1977 (sic)”.

The video was also shared here on TikTok.

A screenshot from the post, taken on November 1, 2022

Another keyframe search found that the video was first published on YouTube on September 26, 2018.

It shows the Talwara Bakra Nangal Pong Dam on the Beas River in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh reaching a record height.

Old Bayelsa video

The fourth video in the slideshow shows a flooded open space surrounded by large homes. The caption contains several hashtag descriptions, one of them indicating the footage was taken in Bayelsa state inside the residential compound used by legislators.

The video has an account name “@mrrighteyerin” stamped on it. An online search led to a YouTube account called “GESI EGBERI TV”, which posted the clip on November 1, 2020.

AFP Fact Check has reached out to “GESI EGBERI TV” for comment and will update this article in the event of a response.

Meanwhile, AFP Fact Check found that the remaining three videos in the slideshow were indeed filmed in Nigeria on the flooded Ahoada Road in the country’s southern Rivers state.

In one video, people are seen holding a rope while navigating the flooded road. A narrator says commuters pay to use a rope or canoe to make the crossing.

Another clip shows a man carrying his bag through the water while the final piece of footage features a narrator lamenting the level of the water as commuters wade along the road.

In each of the videos, a white fuel tanker with a red cabin caught in the floods can be seen.

A search of AFP’s picture archives revealed that a photographer sent to the scene to document the floods took a shot of the same truck on October 21, 2022.