Full story: President Bola Tinubu on Friday June 9, suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele from office. The information about his suspension was contained in a statement released on the evening of the said day by the Director of Information in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation OSGF (OSGF), Willie Bassey. Emefiele was subsequently arrested the same day by the officials of the Department of State Service.

A 26 seconds video however began circulating about 24 hours later in the social media space showing bales of dollar notes said to have been found in Emefiele’s house during a DSS raid.

Lere Olayinka, a former Special Assistant on Media to Ayo Fayose , the former governor of Ekiti State, shared the video on his Facebook page here with the caption “Imagine this video being circulated as DSS findings in Emefiele’s house. Haba!! E no make sense”. The post has now gathered over seventeen thousand views, about one hundred and forty reactions, and about one and twenty comments.

One twitter user, @FAbdullahi4860 shared the video on her twitter handle here with the caption “You need to see…What DSS discovered in Emefiele’s house”. The video has gathered over half a million views, over three thousand likes, about one thousand five hundred retweets and over five hundred quote tweets. See a collage of the screenshots of the said posts below.

Kwara Legacy Frontiers attached the video to a news article on its website with the headline “Video: mountain of new 1000 naira notes & dollars reported found in Emefiele house by DSS”. The video can also be found on the page of social media users here, here, here and here.

The virality of this video and the personality of the suspended official justify the need to verify the veracity of the claim.

Verification: The video was subjected to a thorough verification, using Invid (a video verification platform to detect emerging stories and assess the reliability of video content spread via social media) and google reverse image search.

The results on Invid generated eighteen keyframes from the video.

A Google reverse image search was thereafter conducted on the images generated. The result was a list of links to videos and other media materials with images similar to those generated.

One of the links listed was that of a one minute video shared by Atlanta Black Star on its facebook page here in 2019. The video was about the ousted Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir. The video was shared with the caption:

Sudan’s Public prosecutor is investigating Ousted President Omar al-Bashir on charges of money laundering and possession of large sums of foreign currency without legal grounds after finding suitcases in his home loaded with around$130 dollars in cash. Authorities found 351 thousand dollars, six million euros, and 5 million Sudanese pounds.

Conclusion: The video being shared on Nigeria’s social media space as taken during a DSS raid on Emefiele’s house was first published in Sudan. It was the concluding part edited from the one-minute video shared by Atlanta Black Star on its Facebook four years ago in Sudan.