Claim: A Facebook page, D English Alhaji, shared a video allegedly showing Nigerian security forces engaging armed men at Rijau Hill, Niger State, on Aug. 11, 2026.
Verdict: False. The video predates the claim. DUBAWA found the same footage shared on Facebook and Instagram on June 5, 2026, with no reference to Rijau Hill or Niger State.
Full Text
On Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026, a Facebook page, D English Alhaji, shared a video showing Nigerian security forces engaging armed men in a gun battle. The user claimed the video was of an August 11, 2026 incident at Rijau Hill.
The post (archived here) was captioned, “This is one of the videos from Rijau Hill where the army were trying to scare these bandits off yesterday, the 11th of August 2026. Show some love and leave ur prayers for these soldiers.”
As of Monday, Aug. 17, 2026, the post had attracted 21,500 likes, 1,900 comments, and 409 shares, generating several reactions from Facebook users.
One user, Bright Timothy Jnr, commented, “Local Bandits vs federal bandits. Movie titled: The Bandits battle.”
Another user, Sunday Ogundele Oloriegbe, wrote, “Where are the Tucano fighter jets we bought, or is it jets without engines we bought? Because in Nigeria anything is possible.”
Also reacting to the video, Emmanuel Eze wrote, “See as Nigeria just turn Nollywood.”
Given the significant engagement the post received and the conflicting details about the date and origin of the footage, DUBAWA sought to verify whether the video was indeed recorded during a military operation at Rijau Hill, as claimed.
Verification
DUBAWA first examined the video’s caption and noticed a date inconsistency. Although the post was published on August 11, 2026, its caption says the army was trying to scare the bandits away “yesterday, the 11th of August 2026.” If “yesterday” is used in relation to the Aug. 11, 2026 publication date, the alleged incident would have occurred on Aug. 10, 2026.
To determine whether the video was recorded during a military operation at Rijau Hill, DUBAWA searched Google for credible reports of the alleged incident.
The search did not produce any credible news report identifying the video as footage from Rijau Hill or confirming that it was recorded during an August 10 military operation there.
The search, however, returned reports of other security incidents in Niger State around the same period.
For instance, Premium Times reported on Aug. 13, 2026, that nine travellers were killed along the Wawa-Lumma road in Borgu Local Government Area of Niger State.
According to the report, police and military personnel were deployed to the area following information about the killings and recovered the victims’ bodies.
The report, which quoted the Niger State Police Command spokesperson, Wasiu Abiodun, also said security personnel intensified clearance operations in the area. However, it did not identify Rijau Hill as the incident’s location or link the operation to the viral video.
This development was also reported by Channels TV, The Punch and Daily Post. None of the reports reviewed by DUBAWA established that the video shared by D English Alhaji was footage from Rijau Hill.
DUBAWA also reviewed the official Facebook page of the Niger State Police Command for any statement regarding the alleged incident but found no report that matched the video or confirmed that the footage was recorded at Rijau Hill.
To further establish the origin of the footage, DUBAWA extracted several frames from the video and ran them through a Google Lens reverse image search. The search produced a visual match on the Facebook page of Oluchi Nwanna, who had shared the same video on June 5, 2026, more than two months before D English Alhaji’s post. The June 5 post was accompanied by the caption: “Abeg why are they shooting at, ena too dey fear to enter bush.”
DUBAWA also found the same video on Instagram. Seyitinubukanoblog on the same June 5, 2026, shared the footage with the caption: “This is what fighting insecurity in Nigeria looks like…”
Neither of these earlier posts identified Rijau Hill or any location in Niger State as the video’s setting. More importantly, the earlier versions demonstrate that the video predates the claim and had been circulating online without the Rijau Hill attribution. This also contradicts the claim that it was recent.
Conclusion
The claim that the video shows Nigerian security forces engaging bandits at Rijau Hill, Niger State, is false.
We found that the footage was published earlier, on June 5, 2026, by other social media users, and none of the earlier versions identified Rijau Hill as the incident’s location.
This fellowship is implemented by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) with support from the European Union.