BY: Abdullateef Sebiotimo

Claim:

Video purported to show Nigerians scavenging for food at a dumpsite as a result of economic hardship.

Verdict: 

MISLEADING.

Full Text: 

A viral video was shared on X, formerly Twitter, on September 11, 2026, by a verified user, Deezy Phanda (@DeezyphandaSA), with a caption that read: 

“300million people in Nigeria 🇳🇬 can’t remove one Corrupt President. I know people are poor but this is too much.”

As of September 19, the post had attracted 22.1K views, amassed 194reposts,  329 likes and 100 bookmarks, as confirmed by FactCheckAfrica. 

The video shows several young people gathered around a large pile of waste, with some appearing to search through discarded materials.The video has a Nigerian flag emoji and a text, “Why should your citizens suffer like this?” placed on it.

The post suggests that the people shown are Nigerians who have resorted to scavenging for food because of worsening economic conditions in Nigeria.

Responding to the tweet in a comment, a verified user, Real African ZA (@philibecks),  “You think these ones will leave if it happens that they entered our country.This is pathetic.No wonder they sell drugs here all over,” comparing the situation in his own country and how this turn Nigerians to criminals in his country, as claimed by him.

Another verified X account with the name, BIG SMOKE (@bigsmike4191) disputed this claim, saying, “First of all, This is not Nigeria…”

The back and forth of the comments of the video, the risk of tarnishing Nigeria’s social image and cause of misinformation made FactCheckAfrica verify the claim.

Verification:

A reverse-image search of frames from the viral video led to earlier versions of the footage and images showing the same individuals in Sierra Leone, rather than Nigeria.

Records of similar images were found online as far back as September 6, 2025 in a facebook post by a Sierra Leonean VYBZ Blog in a group named, “Friends Who Like Radio Democracy 98.1 FM.”

A corresponding video featuring the same individuals was also published on December 1, 2025, by House of Happiness Sierra Leone, a verified non-governmental organisation that documents and supports drug-affected and homeless young people in the country.

The earlier Sierra Leonean posts identify the people shown as individuals affected by the country’s Kush drug crisis and show them scavenging at a dumpsite.

Further searches found that similar images from the same incident were published on Facebook in July 2026, months before the footage was presented as evidence of hardship in Nigeria. The location and context are also consistent with independent reporting on Sierra Leone’s Kush crisis.

A 2024 report by NPR’s Tommy Trenchard documented the impact of Kush, a synthetic drug that has severely affected young people in Sierra Leone. The report included photographs of young men sorting through rubble at the Kingtom dumpsite in Freetown and described the drug crisis as occurring against a backdrop of poverty and unemployment in the country.

The report further documented young people living and spending time around the Kingtom dumpsite and linked the site to people affected by the Kush epidemic.

The substance-abuse crisis in Sierra Leone has also been independently acknowledged by international authorities. In April 2024, the World Health Organisation reported that more than 500 stakeholders, including Sierra Leonean government officials, UN agencies and civil society organisations, participated in a government-led meeting on the country’s Kush epidemic.

This evidence does not establish that the people shown in the viral video are Nigerians or that the footage was recorded in Nigeria. Rather, available records indicate that the footage had already circulated in a Sierra Leonean context months before it was republished with a Nigerian narrative.

While the  UN  World Food Programme warned that an estimated 33.1 million Nigerians will be facing food insecurity in Nigeria by 2025, the viral footage cannot be used as evidence of that situation because it was used out of context. 

Conclusion:

The claim that the video shows Nigerians scavenging for food because of economic hardship under the Nigerian government is MISLEADING. Available evidence traces the footage to Sierra Leone, where similar images and video of the individuals had circulated in connection with the country’s Kush crisis before the footage was presented as Nigerian.

The video has therefore been miscontextualised and should not be presented as evidence of Nigerians experiencing the situation depicted.