Photos of a student left dead in a gutter in Nigeria have been misused to score political points in Liberia.

MARY ALEXANDER • 7 MAY 2024
Published by Africa Check on 10 May 2024

Warning: This report fact-checks and links to distressing photos.

Photos of a woman’s lifeless body lying in a gutter have been circulating on social media since late March 2024 with the claim she was found behind the house of new Liberian president Joseph Boakai.*

Liberia is a small country on the West African coast. Boakai, of the United Party, was elected in November 2023. He narrowly beat out the incumbent, former football star George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change, who had been in power since 2018.

The photos’ caption also claims that Boakai’s new government is “killing innocent Liberians” as his party supposedly did while it was in opposition. It reads in full:

unknown body found behind the president of Liberia house in rehab! BOAKAI and his recircle criminals in government are not just looting and stealing but also killing innocent Liberians like they did doing their opposition life!! The Disaster and Calamity Liberians brought doing the election is finally paying back to their own suffering and bad governance!!!

The claim can also be seen here, here, here and here.

But do the photos really show an “unknown body” found behind Boakai’s residence in 2024?

Twenty-year-old student murdered in Enugu

Reverse image searches of the photos reveal that they’ve been online since March 2021, more than three years ago and long before Boakai’s presidency. And they’re from Nigeria, not Liberia.

They first appeared on social media on 29 March of that year with appeals to identify the woman’s body. She had been found outside Roots Cafe on Presidential Road in Enugu, the capital of the southeastern Nigerian state also named Enugu.

Later news reports identified the woman by name. She was a 20-year-old student at Enugu’s Institute of Management Technology.

Within days, the Enugu State Police Command announced that two suspects had been arrested for her murder.

* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after being rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.