|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: Charly Boy posted on X that Nnamdi Kanu’s son is the first child to win an international World Brain Competition in English, Mathematics, and Russian Language.
Verdict: False! DUBAWA discovered that the boy in the image is unrelated to Nnamdi Kanu. A reverse image search showed he is Alejandro Cooper, a Namibian child actor.
Full Text
Nnamdi Kanu is a political activist who has long advocated for the independence of Biafra from Nigeria. He leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), founded in 2012, and was arrested by the Nigerian government in 2021 over allegations of terrorist activities.
Recently, Nigerian activist Charly Boy posted a picture of a young boy on his X page, claiming he was Nnamdu’s son and that he had become the first to win English, Mathematics, and Russian Language in an international world brain competition.
The post contained a link and read in part, “Breaking News: Nnamdi Kanu’s son has shocked the world by becoming the first child ever to win English, Mathematics, and Russian Language in an international world brain competition.”
By October 3, 2025, the post had gone viral, amassing 957,400 views, 24,000 likes, 4,600 reposts and quotes, and 1,400 comments. It was also shared on Facebook, here, here, here, on Instagram, and Threads.
The claimant is a public figure known for posting misleading narratives, and the father of the boy in question is also a public figure. Given the post’s virality, we decided to verify this claim.
Verification
A keyword search on Nnamdi Kanu’s children yielded no images matching the boy in the viral post.
This prompted us to conduct a Google reverse image search on the posted image, which led us to an Instagram post by The Nambian on November 19, 2024.
Part of the post wrote, “Namibian actor Alejandro Cooper (12) was recognised as the best younger African actor at the Sotigui Awards held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, over the weekend.”
We conducted a keyword search on Alejandro and found he is a 12-year-old actor from Namibia who has rapidly emerged as one of the most discussed young talents in African cinema. He was born and raised in Namibia and gained international acclaim at the age of 11 when he received the Best Young African Actor award. He was the festival’s youngest winner in that category’s history.
The link attached to the post looked suspicious, so we checked it using NordVPN. The results identified it as a malicious website. “It could infect your device with viruses, worms, spyware, trojans, and other malware,” the site warned
.
Screenshot of the result. Picture source: NordVPN.
We also noticed that the claim is recurring, with different images but the same write-up and attribution as Kanu’s son. This is a recurring pattern where different images of children were circulated with the same fabricated story, falsely attributing them to Kanu’s son.
DUBAWA looked up the competition he was said to have participated in, but discovered it didn’t exist. No credible media organisation has reported the news.
Conclusion
This claim is false. Checks revealed that the boy in the image is unrelated to Nnamdi Kanu and is not a Nigerian. We also discovered that the said award doesn’t exist.
