Yunusa Umar
On August 12, 2024, a TikTok user, social media influencer and critic , @real_verydarkman posted a video on his account page showing Donald Trump, former president of the United State of America and 2024 presidential candidate of the Republican party saying that he would visit Nigeria for campaign and also to beg for votes from Nigerians in the United States.
The post’s caption thus reads; “This is a huge news trump is coming to Nigeria next week Wow #trending #viral #viralvideo #fyp #verydarkman #foryou #vdm #naijatok”.
The part of footage’s audio transcribed below; I will be coming to Nigeria for a campaign. Please, Nigerians in the USA, I want y’all to vote me in my coming election. If you vote me, visa to United States will be free for Nigerians. I’m begging, vote me and I will remove bad government in Nigeria, I know how to do it.
The video which continues to spread has generated over 10,000 reactions, at least 1,300 comments and 4,000 reposts. Some TikTok users who commented on the widely shared video, @Tinted001 said, “God protect you dear.”
JunchiBb commented with a different caption that reads, “our refinery is in trouble. They want to come openly and carry the remaining 20% crude oil.
@Alex Andrew wrote; “I degree as a servant of God you are the next president of United State of America”.
@Simonpeter368 user wrote, “This is cool men! We’ll come Trump”. Another user, Terry B Foster also commented,“This is Al.”
Verydarkman is a controversial Nigerian influencer with a huge number of followers across social media platforms and a reputation for making authoritative socio-political commentary.
VERIFICATION
NV-A conducted a keyword search on Trump visiting Nigeria between 19th-25th August, 2024 but could not find any credible news report supporting the claim.
To further verify the trending claim, NV-A uploaded the footage on deepware.ai, an AI application that scans and detects deep fake videos to determine whether it is manipulated or not.
The Deepware analysis showed that the video is a deep fake as there is misalignment between the audio and mouth movement of Trump. Similarly, a lip-reading assessment showed a mismatch as the speaker’s lips were not forming the words being spoken which indicates that the footage was manipulated.
Also, there was no evidence of an official statement either on Trump’s social media handles or his campaign team on the visit. And neither has the Nigerian government shared any press statement, confirming a visit from the presidential candidate.
When NV-A extracted screenshots of the video above and subjected it to Google Lens, the results showed that the still picture in the manipulated video was taken when former President Buhari met with Trump on the invitation of the former U.S. President in April 2018 and the discussion between the leaders in an original video from the visit was on terrorism and security in Africa, not the upcoming U.S. presidential election And Muhammadu Buhari who was featured in the video is no longer Nigeria’s president, having handed over the office to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29, 2023.
Also, a screenshot of the original video was taken from the X post and subjected to reverse image search, the exact matches result from Google revealed a list of exact images and an imprint that shows that videos were generated with TryParrotAI.com. The videos generated using this platform have only this template of Trump with the flag behind him and wearing a blue striped tie which has been used multiple times to generate videos of him talking about P. Diddy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, his boats and other topics.
Meanwhile, NV-A has previously debunked a related claim that Donald Trump would grant free visas to Nigerians if he becomes the U.S. president again.
CONCLUSION
The claim that Donald Trump plans to visit Nigeria for election campaign and was begging Nigerians for votes is FALSE as NV-A findings reveal that the video posted has been manipulated with Deepfake tools.
