Old military documentary represented as recent gun battle between soldiers and unknown gunmen

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Maryam Umar

Claim: An X user, AKSMILE911, shared a video alleging that Nigerian soldiers engaged in a face-to-face gun battle with unknown gunmen. 

Verdict: False. The video shared in the post is unrelated to any recent military engagement in Nigeria. It is from combat training and was previously circulated in a different context.

Full Text 

On June 6, 2026, an X user, AKSMILE911, alleged that Nigerian soldiers engaged in a face-to-face gun battle with unknown gunmen. The post (archived here ) was accompanied by a video showing Nigerian soldiers engaged in active combat. 

The post’s caption reads, “Happening: Soldiers reportedly engaged in a face-to-face gun battle with unknown gunmen. The exact location of the incident is still unknown as tension continues to rise.” 

The post has since garnered 35,000 views, 110 likes, 53 comments, and 24 retweets. 

One user, Adrenalinej004, who believed the claim wrote, “Every day Nigeria just be like movie seasons for my eye.”

Another user, @yourwriterpro, said, “The ceaseless, rhythmic oscillation of my head in response to the Nigerian news cycle serves as quite an effective, albeit involuntary, daily neck workout.”

Given the current security situation in Nigeria and to curb violent narratives in public discourse, we decided to verify the claim. 

Verification 

Seeing that the X post provided no verifiable details about the alleged incident or clues, we conducted a Google Reverse Image Search and keyword searches on multiple frames of the circulating video. 

The searches returned no credible news reports on any face-to-face gun battle between Nigerian soldiers and unknown gunmen around the period the post was made. 

We also did not find any official communication from the Nigerian Army to corroborate such an incident.

Further investigation traced the video to a YouTube upload by Voice TV Nigeria, a Nigerian media outlet. 

The video, titled “Nigeria Army Combat Training Nonstop Shootings,” was first published on May 22, 2023. 

The footage was from the Nigerian Army’s 2023 Combat Arms Training Week held in Bauchi State, which featured intensive, live-fire drills to test new frontline strategies and enhance tactical proficiency. The operation shown in the clip was a structured, command-led exercise, not the spontaneous engagement as described in the viral post.

Defence News Nigeria shared the same clip on X. The caption of the post shared on May 23, 2023, reads, “Impressive coordination in this high-octane live fire exercise.” This caption also contradicts the claim that the video is a recent confrontation with unknown gunmen. 

Conclusion 

The claim that Nigerian soldiers engaged in a face-to-face gun battle with unknown gunmen is false. The video accompanying the post is of the Nigerian Army’s 2023 Combat Arms Training Week held in Bauchi State.

This fellowship is implemented by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) with support from the European Union.