Fact checks

Africans selling Africans to work in Congo mines? No, video of Nigerian military academy initiation

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The false claim tries shift blame for the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade.

MARY ALEXANDER • 23 JUNE 2024

Africans selling Africans to work in Congo mines? No, video of Nigerian military academy initiation

“Africans selling Africans in the Congo to work in the mines. 2024.”

That’s the common caption for a video circulating on social media.*

The 30-second clip shows dozens of nearly naked dirt-covered men with shaved heads huddled together on a pile of sand. Other men in blue and black uniforms stand around, giving orders and laughing.

Text on the screen reads: “This is how it happened 400 years ago! They were marched to the beach where they were sold.”

That’s a reference to the transatlantic slave trade of the 1500s to 1900s. Up to 13 million people were kidnapped from different regions of Africa and taken west across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold into slavery in North America, South America and the Caribbean.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a Central African country rich in minerals such as gold, copper and cobalt. Several international mining companies operate there.

But it’s one of the world’s five poorest countries. The DRC’s mineral wealth is said to drive conflict in the country.

Over the years there have been reports of human rights abuses, child labour and “modern-day” slavery in the DRC’s mining industry.

The video has been posted with comments such as:

BLM is Black Lives Matter, a social movement that went global after the murder of George Floyd by US police officers in 2020. Antifa stands for anti-fascist.

The claim has also been posted in languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Urdu, Polish and Greek.

But it’s false. The video isn’t evidence of “Africans selling Africans”, in 2024 or at any time. It just shows new recruits at a Nigerian military academy.

‘A lot of people are very ignorant’

In comments on the video, social media users point out that the uniformed men are speaking Yoruba. This is a language found in Nigeria and surrounding West African countries. It’s not spoken in the DRC.

One comment reads, in part: “If you understand the language they’re speaking, you won’t have tweeted this rubbish. They’re actually undergoing a military/cadet training.”

Other users agree that the clip simply shows some kind of military training, possibly in Nigeria.

Africa Check took screenshots of frames from the video and ran them through reverse image searches.

These eventually led to what seems to be the original version, posted on TikTok in July 2023 and without the text on the screen.

“This day is always a memorable day,” the caption reads. It tags other TikTok users. One is the account of the Maritime Department of the Institute of Transport and Management Technology (ITMT), a military training academy based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Another video on the same account, posted in May 2024, shows a similar scene to the one in the viral video. The text on the screen reads: “Congratulations to you guys on your final training (BAPTISM).”

It turns out that “baptism” is an initiation ceremony at ITMT.

“It is quite surprising a lot of people are very ignorant,” ITMT academic director Cynthia Chidera Ahamefule told AFP Nigeria fact-checker Sahmad Uthman in late May.

“It is a drill called baptism, for new cadets who are just admitted into the school.”

Uthman’s full fact-check can be seen here. It includes newer photos, supplied by Ahamefule, that confirm that all the video shows is the “baptism” of new recruits at ITMT.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 27 June 2024

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