A video showing armed men ordering female students to strip naked has resurfaced online, with a claim that the incident happened in Nigeria.
An X user, @DrBarryAvotu1st posted the video with a caption that read:
“See a country that has police and army! Kidnapped school children in the hands of kidnappers and forced to go naked – boys and girls.
This is insanity! Do we have a Government in Nigeria ? This is wrong oh”
The post has generated over 445k views with more than 687 reposts and over 1215 likes as of March 25, 2024.
Another X user, @X_Daily, posted the video with another caption thus:
“See a country that has police and army! Kidnapped school children in the hands of kidnappers and forced to go naked – boys and girls. This is insanity!”
The post has generated over 11.7k views, 47 reposts and 32 likes as of March 25, 2024.
Claim
Video shows armed men stripping students naked in Nigeria
Findings
A Google and Yandex reverse image search shows that the video is not recent and has been online since January 2022.
An earlier version of the vide was posted here, by a blog named Koksnation in January 2022.
Findings shows that the claim is MISLEADING.
In the video, armed men suspected to be Amazonian militants could be heard ordering the students who were wearing white and sky blue school uniforms to strip naked.
They also shot into the ground near some of the students.
The armed men also spoke in Pidgin English, which is native to the Anglophone region of Cameroon, ordering the students to raise their hands after stripping them naked.
A voice at the end of the video could also be heard saying in Pidgin English “na dem dey go school for Buea.”
The capital of Cameroon’s Southwest Region is called Buea. Situated in Fako Division, the city is situated on the eastern flanks of Mount Cameroon.
In an earlier report by the BBC, the students were identified as being from Government High School Buea-Bokova.
There has been an ongoing armed conflict in Cameroon since 2017 after separatist groups from the Amazonian region are fighting for secession of the English-speaking north-west and south-west regions. The call for the establishment of the Republic of Ambazonia has led to clashes with government forces, resulting in attacks, kidnappings, and killings in the region.
Human Rights Watch in a 2022 report, disclosed that Cameroonian separatists have abused the civilian population in the Anglophone regions by killing and attacking civilians, attacking educational facilities, kidnapping workers, and stripping schoolgirls naked and beating them, to name just a few violations.
VERDICT
The claim that the video shows armed men stripping students naked in Nigeria is misleading; the video is from Cameroon and has been online since 2022.
