A claim that the headquarters of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has being destroyed has surfaced online.
The claim, written in Hausa language, was made by Hausa News Reports, a Facebook user on the social media platform. It originally read thus:
“A suicide bomber has struck the Central Bank of Nigeria in Abuja, with fears of casualties and the destruction of $100 billion.
A suicide bomber completely destroyed the Central Bank of Nigeria on Christmas Day – what’s happening now.
Two images purportedly showing the aftermath of the destruction were also attached to the post.
The post has garnered over 1,500 likes, with more than 800 comments and over 200 shares as of December 28, 2024.
CLAIM
Images show aftermath of damaged CBN headquarters in Abuja.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is FALSE!
A Google Reverse Image search conducted on both images did not provide any visuals depicting the exact posted images. It, however, show images of the CBN headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
Checks by our fact-checker show that the image had elements of manipulation. Using the clone detection feature in Forensically, an image detection tool, it pinpointed areas on both images that might have likely been manipulated as seen below.
Further findings show that both photos have an AI watermark which shows that the images were AI-generated.
A keyword search on Google search engine on the words, “CBN Destroyed” did not provide any related media report, as such incident would be widely reported by local and international media platforms.
THE VERDICT
The claim that images show aftermath of damaged CBN headquarters in Abuja is FALSE; the images are AI-generated.
Fatimah Quadri is a Journalist and a Fact-checker at The ICIR. She has written news articles, fact-checks, explainers, and media literacy in an effort to combat information disorder.
She can be reached at sunmibola_q on X or fquadri@icirnigeria.org