A video shared on social media has claimed that protesters torched Nyanya police station during the August 1 demonstration.
The 43-second video, which has since gone viral, showed young boys destroying properties at a checkpoint on the busy Abuja-Keffi expressway.
A voice in the clip claimed the Nyanya police station, located on the outskirts of Abuja, had been razed by irate youths protesting pervasive hardship in the country.
The video posted on X by one Okezie Atani via his verified handle, @Onsogbu, has garnered over 18,000 views, 151 likes and 115 reposts.
The video was also posted on Facebook and shared widely on WhatsApp.
THE #ENDBADGOVERNANCE PROTEST
On Thursday, youths across Nigeria took to the streets to protest food inflation, increase in the price of petrol, insecurity and high governance costs, among other issues.
The federal government had appealed to organisers of the protest to shelve the planned demonstrations and urged them to be patient.
The police had also asked the protesters to identify themselves to prevent a possible hijack of the planned action.
In Abuja, the protest was restricted to the MKO Abiola Stadium —a move which was rejected by some anti-government protesters who clustered around Eagle Square, Unity Fountain and other locations.
VERIFYING THE CLAIM
To ascertain whether Nyanya police station was indeed torched, TheCable partly relied on Google Maps and Google Earth.
Google Maps showed that the Nyanya police station is 2.1km — about five minutes drive — from the checkpoint where the incident occurred.
Google Earth on the other hand showed that there is no police station in the reported location.
TheCable also contacted Josephine Adeh, the FCT police spokesperson, who said the police station was not burnt by protesters.
The FCT police command said it was the “traffic control container compartment” at the Nyanya checkpoint that was burnt.
“Contrary to the news making rounds about Nyanya division being burnt down by violent protesters, the FCT police command wishes to state that it wasn’t the police division that was burnt but rather the police container compartment at Nyanya checkpoint that was set ablaze,” the statement reads.
“There was an attempt to vandalize the Tipper garage Police post by four (4) suspects, Mathias Jude 29 ‘m’ of Nyanya Area D, Mohammad Ahmed (23), Abba Jibril (18) and Mohammad Haruna (18), who have been arrested.”
VERDICT
The claim that the Nyanya police station was burnt by protesters is false. The hoodlums only destroyed the police container compartment for traffic controllers at a checkpoint in Nyanya.
