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Claim: A viral video shows a police officer brutalising a passenger along the Abuja-Kogi expressway.
Verdict: FALSE! It is a recirculating video from 2021. No credible media outlets reported the case.
Full Text
Police brutality refers to the excessive and unjustified use of force by law enforcement officers against individuals, leading to physical harm, injury, or even death. This form of misconduct can manifest in various ways, including but not limited to physical assault, verbal abuse, false arrests, and even lethal force.
A viral video on X and Facebook shows a uniformed police officer physically assaulting a man on the express road. The officer could be seen rough-handling the man and threatening to injure him further.
A stranger could be heard in the background narrating the events leading to the assault. He explained that the victim was ushered out of the bus and forced to go to a POS shop to transfer money to the officer. The refusal of the passenger led to the slaps and assaults on him
The video, which has now gone viral on X, has garnered a total of 1,020 likes, 1,555 quotes, and 62,700 views since it was posted Nov. 8, 2023.
An X user @Aoneimayin quoted the video and wrote, “Animals in uniform hmmm Kogi election go tough ooo. This is a sign of hoodlums in Kogi” linking the video to the forthcoming off-cycle elections in Kogi State.
The virality of the video and the off-cycle elections in view is why DUBAWA decided to investigate the claim.
Verification
We used the INVID extension to run a thorough check on the video, and the results showed that it was an old video from 2021.
Further investigations led us to an old blog post from Linda Ikeji with the same video dated Oct. 17, 2021. The footage had the caption, “IGP orders investigation into viral video of police officer slapping a passenger along an express road in Kogi state”.
The blog stated that The Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, had ordered the Commissioner of Police, Kogi State Command, to conduct discrete investigations into the incident depicted in a trending video.
In a statement released in 2021, the spokesperson of the Nigerian police, Frank Mba, said the police chief had ordered an investigation into the matter.
”The IGP calls for calm, noting that at the end of the investigations, justice will be done to the victim of the incident and police personnel found guilty, brought to book.” the statement in part reads.
We also did a keyword search to see if we would find any recent reports on it in the news and found nothing of such.
Conclusion
The viral video of the policeman assaulting a passenger is not linked to the Kogi elections. The video is an old video from 2021.
