Claim: Social media users shared a video showing bandits torturing the students recently kidnapped in Oyo State.
Verdict: Misleading! Our findings revealed that the footage has been on the internet since April 29, 16 days before the abduction took place.
Full Text
Following the recent kidnapping of 46 teachers and students in Esinele and Yawota area of Oyo state, some social media users have started posting a video depicting how the kidnappers are torturing the students.
The 54-second footage shows armed men dropping a melting yellow keg on three blindfolded young men with their hands tied to their backs. The young men reacting to this act cried and scampered in pain while the oppressors watched and laughed.
The video has since gone viral with several users sharing it on both X and Facebook, as seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
DUBAWA conducted this fact check due to the sensitive nature of the claim.
Verification
We broke the video into keyframes and conducted a reverse image search. Results led to the earliest version posted by Zoya, an X user, on April 29, 2026. This was 16 days before the kidnapping took place.
Apart from the Oyo kidnapping, we also found that the footage has been linked to an unrelated incident in Burkina Faso. People posting the narrative said the victims were “young Peuls who were captured and wrongly accused of terrorism” by the country’s security forces.
Conclusion
Contrary to the viral claim, the footage had been on the internet 16 days before the Oyo stage abduction took place. The claim is therefore misleading.