By Emmanuel Oluwadola
Claim: Multiple Facebook accounts claim that a group of armed Hausa youths invaded an Igbo market in the North, and killed at least six men.
Full Text
The recent gruesome killings of some Northern travellers went viral on social media platforms and news outlets in Nigeria. According to Edo State Police Command, the incident occurred at Uromi, East North East Local Government Area of Edo State on Thursday, 27 March 2025.
The Governor of the State, Senator Monday Okpebholo, in a statement said that investigation revealed that the people who were killed had boarded a commercial truck and were stopped by members of local security who upon search of the vehicle, discovered some guns with them. This situation led to a mob attack by persons around the vicinity.
The actual number of victims of the incident is not clear, while the Edo State Government claimed seven persons were killed, several reports claimed that 16 people were killed. Governor Okpebholo disclosed that 14 people had been arrested as the investigation continued.
Three days after the mob killing, multiple Facebook accounts on March 30, 2025, claimed that at least six Igbo men had been killed and ten injured as a group of armed Hausa youths invaded an Igbo market in the North.
The posts further claimed that the attack was reportedly in retaliation for the recent incident in Edo State, urging people to call their family in the north and share the claim to alert more Igbos in the north.
The claim reads in part, “Breaking News: Happening now—at least six Igbo men have been killed and ten others injured as a group of armed Hausa youths invaded an Igbo market in the North, attacking anyone in sight.
“This attack is reportedly in retaliation for the recent incident in Edo, where Edo youths killed 16 Northern terrorists who had been terrorizing their communities for a long time. The attackers are also heading to Igbo residential areas, attempting to set entire buildings on fire with Igbo residents still inside.”(sic)
Screenshot of the claim on one of the Facebook accounts
The claim can also be found on other Facebook accounts here, here, here and here.
Due to the relevance and suspicion of the claim, we conducted this fact-check.
Verification
A keyword search on Google revealed that the claim surfaced from Facebook and we could not trace the report to any credible media organisations in Nigeria.
We observed that the post did not mention specific details of the location of the attacked Igbo market in the north.
Also, a Google image search revealed that one of the images attached to the claim earlier appeared online in 2023 of an incident in Nigeria’s Catholic Diocese Parish house in Kafanchan, Kaduna State reportedly set ablaze in a suspected kidnapping. It can be found here and here.
Screenshot showing where the image attached to the claim was first used in 2023
We further analysed other images attached to the social media claims using Hive, an AI image detector. The results revealed that the images were AI-generated, 99% and 96.3% respectively.
Screenshots of the results on Hive
Conclusion
The claim that armed Hausa youths invaded a market and killed six Igbo men in the North is FALSE. The claim originated from unverified Facebook posts, lacking credible media sources and specific details of the event’s location. The images used with the claim are misleading and fabricated using AI.
