Fact-Check: Viral Photo of Youth Scavenging at Dumpsite is from Sierra Leone, Not Nigeria

Claim: A viral photo/video shows Nigerians eating from a refuse dump because of the country’s worsening economic hardship.

Verdict: Misleading

Full story 

A photograph circulating on social media has been presented as evidence that Nigerians are now so impoverished that young people have resorted to eating from refuse dumps.

The post made on the 11th of September 2026 by a South African X user @DeezyphandaSA was accompanied by a caption that reads, “300 million people in Nigeria can’t remove one corrupt president. I know people are poor, but this is too much.”

The image shows young people gathered around a large waste pile, with some appearing to sort through discarded materials and food. Overlaid text reads, “why should your citizens suffer like this?”, alongside a Nigerian flag and a broken-heart and crying emojis.

However, the image has been miscontextualised. It is not evidence of Nigerians eating from a Nigerian dumpsite.

Findings by NDRFactCheck show that the image is linked to Sierra Leone’s drug addiction crisis and not Nigeria.

A reverse-image search and review of online records found that the image is associated with Sierra Leone, where a severe synthetic-drug crisis involving a substance known as ‘Kush*’ has affected thousands of young people.

Our findings found that similar images of the people shown in the viral footage were circulating online as early as September 6, 2025, on Sierra Leonean platforms documenting the country’s drug and homelessness crisis. The investigation also traced corresponding video footage of the same individuals to House of Happiness Sierra Leone, a charity organisation that works with drug-addicted and homeless young people in the country. The organisation published the corresponding footage on December 1, 2025.

We also found that images from the same incident were shared on Facebook on July 25, 2026, with the posts identifying the people as victims of the Kush crisis scavenging at a Sierra Leonean dumpsite.

These records are significant because they predate the Nigerian version of the claim and establish that the footage was already circulating in a Sierra Leonean context.

Kush is a synthetic drug that has caused a major public health and social crisis in Sierra Leone, particularly among young people.

A 2024 investigation by NPR’s Tommy Trenchard documented the impact of Kush in Freetown. The report described young men in the capital spending much of their money on the drug and experiencing severe social and health consequences. It also included photographs of young men sorting through rubble at the Kingtom dumpsite in Freetown.

The NPR report described Kush as a cheap and highly addictive synthetic cannabinoid and reported that unemployment and poverty had contributed to its appeal among young people. One 21-year-old user, Salifu Kamara, told NPR that young people were turning to the drug amid unemployment and difficult living conditions.

The connection between the dumpsite and the drug crisis is also independently documented. NPR’s report specifically captioned one image: “The kush epidemic is unfolding against a backdrop of poverty in much of Sierra Leone. Here, young men sort through rubble at the Kingtom dumpsite in Freetown.”

House of Happiness Sierra Leone has been particularly active in documenting the country’s Kush crisis and supporting affected people.

The organisation’s social media presence contains records of its work with homeless and drug-affected youths. Archived references to its posts show that it has published images and videos documenting Kush users and homeless young people in Sierra Leone.

Conclusion

The viral image does not show Nigerians eating from a refuse dump. Evidence from reverse-image searches and earlier online publications traces the image/video to Sierra Leone, where young people affected by the country’s Kush crisis have been documented scavenging at dumpsites.

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