FACT CHECK: Is this a video of racist foreigner assaulting Nigerian worker in Nigeria?

CLAIM: A viral video purportedly shows a foreigner physically assaulting a Nigerian worker in Nigeria.

VERDICT: Misleading

FULL TEXT

An X user, UCHECHUKWU

(@Yucee), recently posted a video showing a physical exchange between an Asian man and a black man. As seen in the video, the Asian threw the first punch and the black man retaliated.

The poster claimed that the black man is Nigerian. The post reads: “Some of all this Foreigners coming to work here in Nigeria always act like gods. I don’t blame them Sha I blame the Nigerian government”

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VERIFICATION

Ripples Nigeria conducted a reverse search on the thumbnails of the video and found old versions of the video dating back to 2021.

A careful study of this longer version of the video, shows that the Asian man is wearing a jacket with ‘CRSG’ written at the back. We searched for the acronym and keywords related to an assault and it leads us to media reports published in 2021, narrating what actually happened in the video.

The Asian man is Chinese and the black man a Sierra Leonean. The Chinese man worked with China Railway Seventh Group (CRSG).

According to a 2021 report by The Sierra Leone Telegraph, the video was taken in a Chinese-operated mining site in Sierra Leone in June 2021. According to the report, the Chinese man was dismissed by the company after the video went viral attracting public outrage.

CONCLUSION

The X post is misleading, the video was not taken in Nigeria and the provoked black man was not Nigerian. The video was taken in a Chinese-operated mining site in 2021.

By Oluwatobi Odeyinka.

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