For months, Nigeria and Sahel have witnessed radical activities and a revival of insecurity. An Instagram account posted a video claiming it showed Nigerian troops kidnapped by local criminals who raided their camps. However, this claim is wrong. The soldiers in the clip kidnapped the Malis in an al-Qaeda-backed Jama’at Nasr al-Islam al-Islam Wal-Muslimin (JNIM) fighter jet in an attack on a military camp in eastern Mali near the border with Burkina Faso.
Since June 7, 2025, the Nigeria Instagram Post has titled: “Sorosok! Some shocking bandits boldly cycling Nigerian troops after raiding their camps.”
Screenshots show fake posts taken on June 16, 2025
“Sorosok” is Yoruba’s expression, meaning “speak out loud”. It became a popular slogan during the protests against police brutality in Nigeria in 2020 (archived here).
The video showed more than 2,000 videos showing a man in a military uniform being forced into a motorcycle by a gunman wearing a headscarf.
The comments below question the identity of the arrested soldier.
“It’s the Chadian army, not the Nigerian army (So original text),” wrote one user, while another said the incident occurred in “Burkina Faso, where you can buy these types of bikes.”
The video was posted by an account called Sorosok Gossip, which publishes lifestyle content and general news about Nigeria.
However, the video does not show Nigerian soldiers being kidnapped by bandits.
Edit from Mali
At the 0’54-inch mark in the one-minute clip, AFP fact-check noted that the Mali military patch was sewn on the sleeve of one of the kidnapped soldiers.
The visible part of the logo is “Fama”, an acronym for Armees Maliennes or Malian Army.
Comparison of the Mali Armed Forces logo appearing in the AFP photo (left) and the sleeves of the kidnapped soldiers in the video
Using Google Lens to perform a reverse image search of keychains in videos, we were brought to June 8, 2025 by terrorism researcher Brant Philip, X post, focusing on West Africa and the Middle East.
In it, he described how Al-Qaeda-backed Jama’at Nasr al-Islam Wal-Muslimin (JNIM) fighter jets killed dozens of Mali soldiers in the Boulkessi military battalion near the Burkina Faso border on June 1, 2025.
AFP reported the incident, saying the Malian army said it lost at least 30 soldiers, but security sources and local officials said they believe the death toll was at least 60 (reserved here).
One of the videos in Philip’s post shows a 30-second clip from a fake post, jnim media logo in the upper right corner (archived here).
Nigerian Army spokesman Onyechi Anele also told AFP fact-check that the video in the claim “does not involve Nigerian troops.”
