By Pascal Ibe

Introduction

Kano metropolis was practically on lockdown on 5 September as thousands of All Progressives Congress (APC) supporters rallied to receive new members into the party ahead of the 2027general elections.

The Sanni Abacha Stadium venue of the rally and all roads in and around  Kofar Mata, Kanti Kwari,  Kurmi markets and IBB Way were jam-packed with singing, dancing and flag /placard waving supporters.

For the APC supporters outside Kano, videos of the mammoth crowd which emerged from the rally lifted their hopes higher as the ruling party aims to remain in power in next year’s elections.

Claim

Two X users believed to be opposition supporters have published a video showing fire razing down the APC billboards and posters, alongside a claim that the incident occurred after the party’s recent rally in the state.

@abdullahiisha25 on X posted (archived here) the video on 7 September and wrote, “After the APC campaign rally in Kano, angry youths were seen pulling down Tinubu billboards and posters and burning them as their frustrations against Tinubu get stronger by the day.

Tinubu must go Tinubu must go Tinubu must go 😔 🚶‍♀️ 😆 Tinubu is a one-term President”

Another X user, @ComrAbdulazeez, shared (archived here) the video with the same claim.

Mixed reactions trailed the video as people who commented on the posts argued whether the clip is real or not.

See comments here and here.

Verification

First, FACTWATCH Nigeria observed that in the video, the fire, smoke, flying debris, and other elements looked unreal and unnatural.

But to further ensure the video is not real, we subjected keyframes from the clip to AI detection tools, and the results confirmed that, indeed, it was AI-generated.

From DeepAI to ZeroGPT to IsThisAI, results indicated that the clip was AI-generated.

The result from SightEngine, another AI detection tool, was uncertain whether the clip was AI-generated or not.

Also, there is no recent credible news report, that confirmed any incident of vandalism of APC billboards and posters by angry youths in Kano State.

Verdict

Simple investigations have shown that the video used to depict the burning down of APC billboards and posters in Kano is AI generated, therefore the claim is FALSE