By Pascal Ibe

Claim 

@ghost_flasher on the X platform shared multiple photos of a man paraded with a cutlass and claimed he was recently arrested, for killing and burying his son in Anambra State.

Verdict

This claim is MISLEADING 

Google Lens results showed that the incident occurred in Ogun State (not Anambra as claimed) in April 2018. Credible publications corroborated the main image of the claim that the incident was about a man who hacked his elder brother and wife to death in Ogun State.

An X user, @ghost_flasher, on the X platform, has shared multiple photos of a man paraded with a cutlass and claimed he was recently arrested for killing and burying his son in Anambra State.

This is a result of continuous tribal online banter between the tribal bigots from Nigeria’s Southeast and Southwest.

In previous checks, FACTWATCH Nigeria has revealed how these ethnic bigots go to any extent of degrading and maligning themselves.

In this post, the user claimed that “an Igbo man from Anambra has been arrested by police because he tried to do a long-time Igbo culture of killing and eating his biological son

He tried to bury a head that served as a trophy to him when he was caught.”

This post generated over 16k views and more than 100 reposts on X.

Verification

The results from a Google Lens search showed that the incident occurred in Ogun State (not Anambra as claimed) in April 2018. Credible publications corroborated the main image of the claim that the incident was about a man who hacked his elder brother and wife to death in Ogun State.

According to TheSun, in an online report published in April 2018, the police in Ogun state arrested one Okwudili Okoro for allegedly attacking his elder brother and his wife and hacking them to death with a machete.

Okwudili, said to be an apprentice under his late brother, Azuibike Okoro,  in the company of another person, had stormed the Ijako, Sango Ota residence of the deceased and hacked him and his wife, Jacinta, while taking their meal.

In a statement, then spokesperson of the Ogun state police command, Abimbola Oyeyemi, the suspect was arrested following a report by one Joseph Nwagu at the Sango Division that Azuibike and his wife had been hacked to death by the suspect and one Kenneth, who came from Sapon in Abeokuta to commit the heinous crime.

Oyeyemi added that upon the report, the DPO in charge of Sango Division, SP Nasirudeen Oyedele, led detectives to the scene where the suspect was promptly arrested, but his accomplice escaped.

Check similar reports of this here and here.

However, FACTWATCH Nigeria discovered that many online blogs published a different report in Anambra with this same image around 2023.

A blog, City Mirror News, posted this same photo with the lead paragraph that reads, “A 35-year-old Nigerian from Anambra state has been arrested for killing his four-year-old son with a cutlass and also burying the body in a shallow grave”.

When this FactChecker searched for the story on Google, Tribune online published this same story with another image of the suspect.

Also, see this story by another news medium here 

A closer look at the other photo attached to the claim indicated the photo was edited merged with another image.

Conclusion

The X user, @ghost_flasher shared multiple images of different incidents to mislead the public.