|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: X and Facebook users post an image showing a United States military cargo plane landing in Nigeria with combat supplies.
Verdict: Misleading! Contrary to the claim, the image has been available online since July 2011. It is unrelated to the US’s recent military activities in Nigeria.
Full Text
On Feb. 10, 2026, the United States (US) announced its plan to deploy 200 troops into Nigeria to help train its military in the ongoing fight against terrorism. About a week later, The Cable and Business Day published news about the arrival of the first batch.
Following this news, X and Facebook users began to share a photo (archived here) depicting the arrival of the Troops. The image showed a US Air Force cargo plane offloading a fighter helicopter.
“Another military supply landed in Nigeria. President Tinubu is not joking with this insecurity matter,” the X user wrote.
Over the past few months, DUBAWA has refuted several narratives about U.S. activities in Nigeria, so we decided to verify them due to their potential for misinformation.
Verification
We conducted a reverse image search and found that the image had been online since July 14, 2011.
The official US Air Force website states that the image was captured by Timothy Wilson at Camp Lemonnier, a US Air Force base in Djibouti. The image shows US Marines preparing to unload a Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter.
The caption of the image read, “…a Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter, from an Air Force Reserve Command C-5B assigned to the 439th Airlift Wing, Westover Air Reserve Base, Mass.”
The helicopter was delivered to support the US regional operations in East Africa.
We also found that the image had been shared in a Reddit post five years ago. This confirms the image is not recent.
Conclusion
Contrary to the claim, the image in question has been available online since July 2011. It has nothing to do with the US’s recent military activities in Nigeria. The claim is misleading.
