|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: A Facebook user claims a woman was recently killed in Niger State for allegedly committing blasphemy.
Verdict: False. DUBAWA’s investigation found that the photo is a collage from unrelated incidents. Although an incident of mob violence over blasphemy occurred in Niger in August 2025, no such killing took place recently.
Full Text
On Sept. 23, 2026, a Facebook user, Mustapha Muhammad, shared an image (archived here) of a crowd curiously watching a burning fire set on the road in a lynch-like style. The picture of a woman was attached to the top right corner of the image.
The Facebook user claimed the woman was killed by the mob in Niger State for blasphemy.
The caption, which was in Hausa, was translated to read, “In Niger State right now, they said this woman has crossed a red line, and she was done to the hereafter. May God protect our faith, amen.”
DUBAWA also found similar claims circulating here, here, and here.
As of Sept. 27, 2026, the Facebook post had garnered 254 reactions, 42 comments, and two shares.
Several comments interpreted the phrase “crossing a red line” as an allegation of blasphemy against the prophet.
“She said something to our prophet,” Habibu Musa Dan Gayarie wrote.
Another user, Kawomi Kolo, told a fellow commenter that crossing the “red line” meant insulting “Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”
Abdull Sanee Muhammad agreed the woman had “passed the red line.” Abdull also justified the killing, stating, “It’s true, it was rightly done to her.”
Given the comments supporting the claim and the post’s potential to inflame religious tension and unrest, DUBAWA decided to verify it.
Verification
DUBAWA conducted keyword searches for police statements and credible media reports to determine whether any mob lynching or blasphemy-related death occurred in Niger State. We found no record of such an incident recently.
However, records show that an incident involving blasphemy allegations occurred over a year ago, on Aug. 30, 2025, in Kasuwan Garba, Mariga Local Government Area of Niger State. According to reports by BBC, Channels TV, and The Sun, a mob killed a food vendor named Amaye.
We investigated the attached image supporting the claim and found that it is unrelated to the Niger incident.
DUBAWA conducted a Google Reverse Image Search and identified the woman as Hauwa Mohammed Liman. Hauwa is an aid worker and midwife with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who was abducted and executed by the jihadist militant sect, Boko Haram, in Borno State in October 2018. She is not connected to the Niger 2025 incident.
Google Reverse Image Search traced the image of the crowd to a Facebook post by Ezeigbo Ojukwu, shared on Sept. 25, 2025. The image was used to show a public lynching in Agbarho, Ughelli North Local Government Area of Delta State, over an alleged attempted child abduction.
Daily Trust and Independent newspapers reported the incident.
To further verify the claim, DUBAWA contacted the spokesperson of the Niger State Police Command, SP Wasiu Abiodun, who also confirmed that the claim relates to an old incident that occurred over a year ago at Kasuwan-Garba, Niger State.
“This is an incident that happened over a year ago at Kasuwan-Garba, Niger State,” he said
DUBAWA further compared the image side by side with the Delta footage. The two visuals depict the same scene, sharing an identical column of thick black smoke, the same building with a dark roof on the left, the same crowd formation, and matching utility poles in the background.
However, upon close observation, we noticed discrepancies in the recirculated image. The frame was slightly cropped, darkened with a dimming filter, and some people’s clothes were slightly altered. Hauwa’s picture was inserted to drive home the claimant’s narrative.
DUBAWA then subjected the picture to Artificial Intelligence (AI) detection tools. Hive Detect rated it 67.9% likely to have been AI-generated.
Another tool, OsintNet, returned a synthetic indicator score of 88/100. It labelled the image as “Very likely AI-generated” with high confidence, consistent with an AI-assisted composite of the recycled fire photo and the old portrait.
Conclusion
We found that the image used to show that a woman was killed in Niger State is false. It is an altered composite of images from a 2025 mob attack in Delta State and a 2018 photograph of a deceased ICRC aid worker.
This fellowship is implemented by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) with support from the European Union.