Social media users in Nigeria have shared a video in January 2025 claiming it showed 200 missing children who were found in a house in Nigeria’s Rivers state. However, the posts are misleading: Nigerian police confirmed the footage featured 16 children rescued from a compound in September 2024 in a case linked to alleged human trafficking.
“Over 200 missing children found in a compound in Ozouba Port Harcourt”, reads a Facebook post published on January 14, 2025, and shared more than 21,000 times.
Screenshot showing the misleading claim, taken January 21, 2025
The post includes a 46-second video showing a group of startled-looking children being ushered to safety by a crowd of adults.
The account sharing the clip has more than a thousand followers and shares random content, especially about the Igbo culture and its people.
Other posts on Facebook (here and here) and Instagram also shared the claim.
But the posts are misleading.
Old case
Using a keyword search on the social media analysis tool Meta Content Library, AFP Fact Check found the video went viral with the same claim in October 2024 (see here and here).
Screenshots of the video shared in October 2024 (left) and in January 2025
At the time, however, Nigeria’s Rivers State Police spokeswoman Grace Iringe-Koko rejected the clip and claims as misleading. She told media that 16 children – not 200 – were found a month earlier on their own in a Port Harcourt compound (archived here).
“On September 8, 2024, operatives of the Rivers State Police Command attached to the Ozuoba division acted on credible information received and rescued sixteen children from a compound in Ozuoba, Port Harcourt. The rescued children comprising eleven girls, and five boys were alleged to be victims of trafficking,” local news outlets quoted her as saying.
Contacted by AFP Fact Check in January 2025, Iringe-Koko reconfirmed that the video circulating online was a year old and related to the abduction of 16 childrne.
She said a resident had tipped off officers about a house containing numerous minors who were on their own.
“When our officers got to the location, we met these children and we realised four of these children belong to a female guardian,” the spokeswoman added.
“Upon investigation, we understood that their guardian has been arrested by Akwa Ibom police officers on a case of murder. That was why the children were left with no one.”
Iringe-Koko said the children were suspected to be victims of child trafficking and had been handed over to the state’s ministry of social welfare.
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