A Facebook page, Igbo Times Magazine made a post on January 5, 2025 at about 8:00 pm Nigerian time, alleging that music star, Ayodeji Balogun, popularly known as Wizkid has lost his eldest son, Boluwatife, in a plane crash.
The post has two pictures placed side by side, one was that of Boluwatife and the other was that of the supposed plane crash site, with the caption, “Breaking News: Tragedy as Wizkid’s First Son Dies in Plane Crash While Traveling to Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. According to online reports supported by video evidence, Wizkid’s eldest son is said to have tragically lost his life in a plane crash while traveling back to the United States.”
VERIFICATION
A reverse image search of the supposed crash site, revealed that the image has been online for almost 2 years and was originally from an accident that happened in Nepal on January 15, 2023.
Also, the claim mentioned that Boluwatife was travelling to Atlanta, Georgia U.S. but the ill-fated plane in that picture as reported by the Washington Post and Times of India was a flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, both locations are within Nepal with no links to the United States of America which is over 13,009 km away from the Asian country.
The link attached to the claim which is supposed to lead interested readers to a site for more details to the news leads to a site that contains no news but an advertisement on an online trading platform. This shows that the claim made by Igbo Times Magazine on Boluwatife’s alleged death was a clickbait luring unsuspecting citizens to an advert.
However, Igbo Times magazine has been fact-checked multiple times and is regarded as a platform that usually publishes misinformation and disinformation content.
VERDICT
The claim that Wizkid’s eldest son, Boluwatife has died in a plane crash is FALSE, as the image is from a plane crash in Nepal and has been online for two years now. Findings also showed that the page that published the information is known for spreading disinformation.
