Claim: Several social media posts claim a military coup has occurred in the Ivory Coast, and internet access has been curtailed in the country.
Verdict: False!DUBAWA’s sources in Ivory Coast have confirmed that as of Wednesday, May 21, 2025, no military coup has occurred and internet service remains active in the country.
Full Text
Several random reports on social media claim that a military coup has taken place in Ivory Coast, and internet access has been cut for most residents.
The viral claim, including some shared on X (formerly Twitter) here and here, is being supported with videos of fire razing a building and street protests.
Many of the Facebook posts sighted by DUBAWA are from pages managed from countries other than the Ivory Coast, such as this page from Ghana and Nigeria, raising questions about the authenticity of the claims.
Verification
DUBAWA accessed screenshots from the videos in some of the claims to verify the claim and ran them through a series of Google reverse image searches. The results showed that videos supposedly showing the occurrence of a military coup in Ivory Coast were from unrelated events.
For instance, the image below, taken from one of the videos in the viral claim, was confirmed from a fire incident at the Adjamé Château commercial centre in February 2025.
Various news reports, such as this and this, and a YouTube video reported on the fire incident.
On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, at 5:38 pm (GMT), Air Jeannin, an Abidjan journalist, told DUBAWA that no military coup had occurred in Ivory Coast.
“I have heard of it [rumours online] but I was at the presidential palace a minute ago and I didn’t see any tanks,” she said.
Based on data from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology, DUBAWA determined that there was no internet shutdown in the Ivory Coast during the alleged military coup. The data shows that at least between May 1, 2025, and May 21, 2025, internet service remained active in the Ivory Coast.
Information from SurfShark’s internet shutdown tracker also indicates that no internet shutdown incident has been recorded in Ivory Coast.
Conclusion
No credible information supports the claim that a military coup has occurred in the Ivory Coast. Videos used to justify the claim are from past unrelated events.
We found the video of the explosion has existed online since 2015.
Verification
In August 2015, massive explosions hit a warehouse in the port of Tianjin in Northern China, killing at least 173 people and leaving hundreds of people injured.
The blast, which has been described as one of the deadliest accidents in Chinese history, is estimated to have caused more than $1 billion in economic losses.
DUBAWA has observed that videos from the incident are not so different from what social media users have circulated online to back their claims of a coup in China.
Evidently, the said explosion did not happen recently, nor did it happen in Beijing as proclaimed by the claimants.
Has there been a coup in China?
As of the time of filing this report, the Chinese Communist Party has not released any official statement to the effect that Xi Jinping has been ousted as President.
Claim: A Facebook user, Evangelist Adda Emmanuel, has alleged that Akufo-Addo has ordered for the immediate arrest of military men in Guinea because they attempted to assassinate him.
Akufo-Addo has not reported on the arrest of military men in Guinea nor on military men attempting to assassinate him in his address to the UN General Assembly.
Full Text
In his capacity as the chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Authority, the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo went to Guinea on 17 September 2021 to have ECOWAS-delegated discussions with Guinea’s military leadership led by Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya which included the immediate release of President Alpha Conde and for elections to be held within six months.
Following this event, a Facebook user, Evangelist Adda Emmanuel, on 19 September 2021, announced in what he claims to be breaking news that Akufo-Addo has ordered for the immediate arrest of military men in Guinea because they attempted to assassinate him.
The post shows below:
Verification
Decisions the ECOWAS Authority agreed on concerning Guinea
On 16 September 2021, a day prior to the ECOWAS delegation to Guinea, the Authority of Heads of States and Governments of ECOWAS chaired by Akufo-Addo, held an “Extraordinary Session” in Accra, Ghana, to review the political developments in the Republic of Guinea. The session’s communique indicated the decisions of the Authority and none included the Chair’s purported order of the arrest of military men in Guinea.
The decisions were as follows:
To uphold the suspension of Guinea from all ECOWAS governing bodies until the restoration of constitutional order
To ensure the conduct of presidential and legislative elections within six months in order to restore constitutional rule in the Republic of Guinea
To impose sanctions, in accordance with extant ECOWAS Protocols, of travel bans on the members of the National Committee for Reconciliation and Development (CNRD) and their family members and of freeze of their financial assets
To call on the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations, and other multilateral and bilateral partners to support the implementation of these sanctions
To ensure that no member of the CNRD is allowed to contest in the presidential election
To accompany Guinea in the swift resolution of the crisis and in the preparations for the elections.
In his address to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly at the 76th Session, on 22 September in New York, Akufo-Addo did not report on any alleged threats of assassination on him while in Guinea to provoke an order from him to arrest any such military men. Rather, he reported that the military leaders communicated a willingness to release Guinea’s President Alpha Conde and he was expecting to hear of that outcome.
“ECOWAS, the regional body whose Authority I have the honour to be the current Chair, is unreservedly committed to maintaining democratic governance in the ECOWAS Community. That is why both Guinea and Mali, foundation members of the Community, have been suspended from its organisation, pending the restoration of democratic governance. We welcome the support of the United Nations for the measures taken. ECOWAS has given Guinea six months to do so, and requested the immediate release of President Alpha Conde. On my visit to Conakry last Friday, the military leaders indicated their willingness to see to his imminent release, and it is our hope that they will keep to their word,” Akufo-Addo said.
Photos of the meeting in Guinea also shared the reception of Akufo-Addo and the delegation by Colonel Mamady Doumbaya, with no reference to any tension between Akufo-Addo and Guinean soldiers.
The spokesperson for the Guinea National Rally and Development Committee, Colonel Amara Camara mentioned that:
Alpha Conde will remain in Guinea at a location determined by the CNRD and will not be exiled. However, Camara assured that Conde was safe and his physical and moral integrity would be ensured.
Plans are underway to return Guinea under constitutional rule where only the sovereign people of Guinea will decide their destiny.
Concerning the sanctions, they did not need to travel and there was nothing in their accounts.
History of the disinformer
Dubawa observed activities on Evangelist Addai Emmanuel’s Facebook page and noticed the user’s tendency of spreading misinformation concerning Akufo-Addo and the Guinea coup-related events and commenting and jesting on current affairs through video and text posts. The page has a community of followers (128,073 followers and 82,134 likes) who commend the user for his videos, find his video commentaries on issues humorous and that need assistance from him, as he appears to be an influencer of some sort. Meanwhile, the page which was created on 16 April 2012, does not indicate that it is a satirical page. It only states that,
“The purpose of this channel will change in the New year into teaching Mathematics, Science, Technology into creativity to help the Ghanaian People.”
This assertion of the Guinea coup being fake is false as the Guinea Coup was reported on 5 September 2021, and there is evidence of the ousting of President Alpha Conde and the military take over led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.
Conclusion
The claim by a Facebook user that Akufo-Addo has ordered the immediate arrest of military men in Guinea because they attempted to assassinate him is false. Akufo-Addo has neither reported on the arrest of military men in Guinea nor did military men in Guinea attempt to assassinate him on any occasion.
