
Posts falsely claim Nigerian minister Nyesom Wike was arrested at US airport
'Breaking News Wike Arrested At U.S Airport Transferred To Washington D.C Prison Over 2023 Election,' reads a Facebook post shared more than 3,000 times since first being published on February 8, 2025.
An eight-minute-long video in the post shows random clips of cars with blaring sirens and parked police vans.
Image
Screenshot of false post taken on February 17, 2025
A Facebook page called 'Dabreezy Comedy' shared the clip with its nearly 700,000 followers.
'I have been seeing news on a matter since yesterday and I saw a viral video on YouTube. They said Nyesom Wike has been arrested in the US. He was arrested immediately after he arrived at the airport and taken to a prison in Washington. I don't know how true this information is but watch this video,' the narrator says in pidgin English.
The video includes embedded footage from another Facebook page called 'Oghi Family Fun2' where a different narrator comments on the same topic and refers to an article published on the subject by Legit.ng, a popular blog in Nigeria, (archived here).
Image
Screenshot showing the tweet from X handle, @celebrityblo
The claim about Wike was repeated on TikTok.
Nigeria's 2023 presidential election was keenly contested and Wike was in the spotlight for openly supporting the eventual winner Bola Tinubu from the rival All Progressives Congress (archived here).
Discrepancies were later uncovered in the ballot results in Rivers state where Wike was governor at the time (archived here).
However, the claim that Wike, who now administers Nigeria's capital city, has been arrested in the US is false.
On home soil
Wike is a seasoned politician in Nigeria, having held key positions in government since 1999, including two terms as governor of oil-rich Rivers state in the Niger Delta region (archived here).
News of his arrest would have made headlines in Nigeria. Keyword searches show this did not happen.
AFP Fact Check searched Wike's verified X account and found posts (here, here and here) showing that he had been inspecting and commissioning construction projects in Abuja since late January.
Yesterday, I commissioned the Carriageway from Garage Junction to Local Education Authority Secretariat in Kuje Area Council, Abuja.
The project was awarded in January 2024. pic.twitter.com/xlz4cR0AJP — Nyesom Ezenwo Wike (@GovWike) January 23, 2025
A video published by the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) also showed Wike presiding over a meeting with security chiefs in Abuja on February 7, 2024 — a day before the post about his alleged arrest was published (archived here).
Four days later, he presided over a second meeting with the Federal Capital Territory security committee (archived here).
Wike's spokesperson Lere Olayinka rejected the claim as false.
'The minister has been in Abuja since the beginning of February. He has not travelled overseas, [much less] being arrested at an airport,' Olayinka told AFP Fact Check.
Furthermore, the Legit.ng article cited in the false video was a fact-check that debunked claims of Wike's arrest (archived here).
However, the narrator in the Facebook video only read the opening paragraph of the article summarising the claim and ignored the rest of the story, which concluded that the arrest rumour had been false.
Image
Screenshot showing the first paragraph of Legit.ng article referenced by the narrator
AFP Fact Check has debunked several claims about Trump and Nigeria here, including that he banned Nigerian politicians from entering the US.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


AFP
3 hours ago
- AFP
Burning police car video predates anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles
"MSM is still calling this Democratic Party run uprising of illegal aliens and communist a 'peaceful protest,'" says a June 8, 2025 post on X from Alex Jones, founder of the conspiratorial website InfoWars. The clip shows a burning police car surrounded by other graffitied vehicles and roving crowds. Image Screenshot of an X post taken June 9, 2025 Similar claims placing the footage at the June 2025 demonstrations in Los Angeles ricocheted across X, where US Congressman Dan Crenshaw and Senator Ted Cruz amplified them. The video also spread on Facebook and on YouTube, as well as in other languages, including Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. Protests in Los Angeles broke out June 6, spurred by immigration raids that resulted in dozens arrests of what authorities say were migrants and gang members. In a move state leaders criticized, US President Donald Trump -- who made immigration enforcement a pillar of his second term -- sent in California's National Guard, a stand-by military usually controlled by the governor. Trump said the deployment of hundreds of Marines, due to arrive in Los Angeles on June 10, was also necessary, despite objections from state officials. Images from the weekend of demonstrations show police spraying tear gas and at least three self-driving Waymo cars torched. According to reports, local police said law enforcement vehicles were targeted with rocks and fireworks during the upheaval and there is at least one news clip showing what appears to be a The clip shared online of the burning police vehicle does not come from that unrest, however. Reverse image searches reveal the British television channel Sky News published the same footage in May 2020 (archived here). The outlet reported that the clip was filmed during nationwide protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in the state of Minnesota. Image Screenshot of the SkyNews website taken June 9, 2025, with the original date of publication highlighted by AFP A photo report from a local Los Angeles NBC affiliate also included images of same police cruisers, identifiable by their numeric markings (archived here). Videos from the explosive 2020 protests, which swept across the United States, have been frequently misrepresented online in the years since, often to spread misleading claims about current events. California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to one post claiming the cop-car video came from the June 2025 protests (archived here). "This video is from 2020," he wrote. nia officials have stressed the majority of protesters have been peaceful -- and that they could maintain law and order themselves. The state of California has sued to block the use of the Guard troops and Newsom said he would also sue against the deployment of the Marines (archived here and here). Read more of AFP's reporting on US misinformation here.


Local France
7 hours ago
- Local France
French Word of the Day: Far West
Why do I need to know Far West? Because you might be confused about why French protesters might use this English phrase in their complaints. What does it mean? Far West - roughly pronounced far west (with a French accent) - is the French term, albeit written in English, for the 'wild west'. You will see French media use it to describe the literal 'Wild West', meaning the area west of the Mississippi River in the United States in the 19th century, seen at the time as 'untamed' and lawless. The term has also gone on to refer to anything unregulated or outside of the law in French. Sometimes the term is written as Far West , far-west or even farwest . For example, most recently, unions representing ride-share drivers (ex. Uber, Heetch, etc), demanded caps on the total number of drivers. They complained: On veut tout simplement contrôler les effectifs, responsabiliser les plateformes numériques et arrêter ce far-west numérique. (We simply want to regulate the workforce, make digital platforms accountable and put an end to this digital wild west). The genre of Westerns (the same word is used in French, though pronounced in a French manner) also found popularity in the early 20th century, and later in the 1950s and 60s. Advertisement During the silent film era, French filmmakers, like Joë Hamman, made their own versions of early 'westerns' in France, in the Camargue coastal region near Montpellier in the south. These were called les films western camarguais. Use it like this Je ne pense pas que j'aurais survécu dans le Far West. Je ne suis pas doué avec les chevaux. - I don't think I would have survived in the wild west. I'm not good with horses. L'internet est devenu le Far West pour les enfants. Il est temps que le gouvernement commence à le réglementer correctement ! - The Internet has become the Wild West for children. It's time the government started regulating it properly!


AFP
10 hours ago
- AFP
Manipulated report falsely claims S.Korea and US presidents did not speak
"How embarrassing," reads the Korean-language caption of an image shared on Facebook on June 7, 2025. The image appears to be a screenshot of a report from South Korean wire service News1 headlined, "[Breaking] White House spokesperson denies Trump spoke to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung". The report carries the byline of correspondent Ryu Jeong-min. The post circulated shortly after South Korea's presidential office announced that Lee had held his first phone call with Trump on the evening of June 6 -- his following his victory in a snap election (archived here and here). The two leaders discussed efforts toward concluding a tariff deal, and Trump also invited Lee to Washington, according to the South Korean presidential office. South Korean media noted the call -- three days after the election -- came later than it had for Lee's predecessors, and speculated about a change in the relationship between Seoul and Washington (archived link). Image Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on June 9, 2025 The screenshot of the purported News1 report was also some commenters accusing Lee of fabricating the call and damaging South Korea's international standing. "They're openly making up lies, how will Lee ever be able to talk to Trump now?" read a comment on one of the posts. Another said: "South Korea has immediately become a pariah on the world stage." While neither Trump nor the White House have issued a public statement about the call, the report circulating online has been altered. 'Obviously manipulated' A keyword search using the name of the reporter in the doctored article found he wrote a breaking news report on June 6 titled "[Breaking] Trump held phone call with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung" (archived link). The article was filed from Washington and cites the confirming via a White House official that the call did occur (archived link). Image Screenshot comparison of the manipulated report shared on social media (left) and the original News1 report published June 6 (right) over email on June 9 that the report about a supposed denial from the White House was "obviously manipulated" and that his actual report confirmed the call had taken place. For example, there was no White House statement about phone calls between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 6 or with Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on May 22 (archived here and here). As of June 10, there have been no official reports contradicting South Korea's announcement of the call between Lee and Trump. AFP previously debunked a digitally altered photo shared online claiming to show Trump's response to South Korea's presidential election.