Fact-Check: Did ‘Northern Men’ Publicly Flog a lady for quitting Marriage for School in Nigeria?
Claim: PRNigeria detected a Whatsapp video that was massively forwarded to groups claiming that some northern men carrying weapons were publicly beating a young lady with sticks for quitting a forceful marriage for school.
Full-Text: The footage where the young lady was brutally beaten up with thick sticks reads:
“According to this post, She was forced into marriage but ran back home to take her books to go back to school. Please pass it on to the world so that she can get justice and probably a real war can be fought to stop this barbarism [sic].
“Whatever it may be she does not deserve this kind of punishment, please pass this round to get her justice! This is happening in the North that has produced power more than any other Region[sic].
“This cannot happen in the West Cannot happen in the East It can only happen in the North Northern Elites shame to you all.pls kindly share so that this barbaric attitude can get to the right place for action to be taken against this pple.Thanks.????????[sic]”
Verification: PRNigeria broke the footage into frames using an online video-to-image-sequence and subjected it to Reverse Image Search, a tool for verification of images, to trace the origin of the picture.
Results revealed pages and accounts of users who posted the video calling the attention of northern elites and human rights organizations to seek justice for the victim, claiming that the incident happened in the northern region of Nigeria.
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A Facebook user, on a post made by Goziem Ekekwe, dropped a link containing the REPORT of the beaten lady, published by Kenyans.co.ke.
Kenyan Twitter users suggested that the incident happened in Kuria, Migori County.
According to the report, the lady in question escaped from a forced marriage and had gone back home to collect her belongings to resume school when she was allegedly tortured by vigilantes who are hunting and flogging women who wear short skirts and trousers.
“Some popular accounts claimed that the girl in the video had run away from home to avoid female genital mutilation.”
To confirm whether the former Governor Nairobi Sonko Mike and Senator Ladama Olekina had posted the video on their verified Twitter and Facebook accounts as reported, PRNigeria reviewed their posts from January 2023 to date.
Olekina did not post it while Mike posted it on both Twitter and Facebook.
Meanwhile, the report also indicated that a fact-check by BBC Africa revealed that the video originated from the eastern Maniema province according to Albert Fabrice Puela, Minister of Human Rights, the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC,.
In confirmation of the said fact-check by BBC Africa on the matter, PRNigeria conducted a further keyword search but could not find the fact-check.
Further investigations by PRNigeria coupled with the review of the Twitter account did not show any reports where he condemned the beating of the girl.
PRNigeria, after critically reviewing the report by Kanyans on the matter, observed that the sources cited in the report were not hyperlinked.
Conclusion: based on the facts gathered by PRNigeria, the claim that the tortured lady is from the Northern region of Nigeria is UNSUBSTANTIATED by any known public records and the video did not originate in Nigeria
Therefore, PRNigeria, concludes that the claim is FALSE.
