A video circulating on social media platforms shows naked women protesting in Lagos state against the policies of President Bola Tinubu. The caption on the video reads: “Lagos Women protesting Naked, placing curse on Tinubu over hardship of the Nation.”
Nigeria has been facing a severe economic crisis since the President announced a series of policies shortly after he was sworn in as president in May 2023. Some of these policies include the removal of fuel subsidy.
These policies have led to a surge in inflation, which stood at 29.9 percent in January 2024, up from 28.9 percent in December 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Food inflation was over 35 percent in January 2024.
The high cost of living has sparked pockets of protests in major cities in Nigeria, as well as labour unions, who held a nationwide protest on February 27, 2024. The protesters blamed Tinubu for the economic woes of the country.
Meanwhile, to verify the claim that the video shows naked women protesting in Lagos, the Explainer Fact Checker used INVID, a tool that allows breaking down a video into several keyframes and performing reverse image searches on them. We found that the video is an old video that has been online since November 2023. The video shows women protesting in Awka, the capital of Anambra state, not Lagos.
Several media platforms, such as PUNCH, the Nation and the Cable published the report on November 22, 2023, with the headline “Women protest naked against alleged killings, corruption in Anambra”. The report said that over 1000 indigenes of 20 villages in Awka community, Awka south local government area of Anambra state, protested naked. They said their anger stemmed from mindless killings of their kinsmen. The protesters marched around the capital city with placards, accusing some senior officers in the police command of aiding and abetting bribery and corruption in the area.
A few days after the protest, the police told newsmen that the protest was sponsored and that the person behind it had been arrested. The police alleged that the protest was staged to soil the reputation of a local police officer, who was accused of being involved in land disputes in the area.
Verdict: Misleading
It is an old video that has nothing to do with Tinubu or Lagos. It was actually recorded in November 2023 in Anambra state, where women protested against alleged killings and corruption in their community.
Conclusion
The video of naked women protesting in Lagos, is an old video that was recorded in Anambra state in November 2023. The women were protesting against alleged killings and corruption in their community, not against Tinubu or his policies.
