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Claim: Following a viral video showing a man violently kicking a young boy to the ground, several social media accounts, including Ezra Radio and content creator Bongo Ideas, reframed the incident as a local emergency, calling on the Ghana Police Service and IGP Yohuno to arrest the perpetrator.
Verdict: Misleading! While the video is authentic and depicts a real act of child abuse, it did not take place in Ghana. The incident occurred in Nigeria in early 2025, and the suspect has already been apprehended by Nigerian authorities.
Full Text
A distressing video depicting a man physically assaulting a young child has circulated widely across Ghanaian social media circles. Social media commentators have shared the footage, calling upon the Ghana Police Service and the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to take immediate action against the perpetrator.
However, in an era of borderless digital content, viral media often loses its original context as it travels between jurisdictions. While the incident depicted is undeniably real, the calls for local intervention in Ghana raise critical questions about the video’s authenticity and whether legal action has already been taken.
DUBAWA decided to fact-check this claim because this appears to be a classic case of “cross-border misinformation” where a genuine, distressing video is re-uploaded in a different geographic context.
Verification
Digital forensic analysis and news reports confirm that the incident took place in the Ota area of Ogun State, Nigeria. The man in the video was identified as Adekunle Odukaye (also referred to locally as Kunle).
The video originally went viral in late February 2025. Following the public outcry, the Ogun State Police Command launched an investigation. Adekunle Odukaye was arrested by Nigerian police shortly after the video surfaced. The Nigerian Police Force confirmed his arrest.
To verify the origins of this video, we employed the InVID Verification Plugin, a professional tool used by journalists to debunk deepfakes and miscontextualised media.
- Keyframe Analysis: As shown in the provided analysis, the video was segmented into keyframes. This allows for a Reverse Image Search of specific moments in the clip.
- Results: The reverse search leads directly to news reports from March 2025 by Nigerian outlets such as The Punch, which documented the arrest of the father in Ogun State.
Why is it trending in Ghana now?
Misinformation often spreads across West African digital spaces due to shared languages and similar environments. By tagging the Ghanaian IGP and the Ghana Police Service, users are inadvertently spreading “zombie content,” old news presented as a fresh local emergency.
Conclusion
The man in the video is not in Ghana, and the Ghana Police Service has no jurisdiction over this specific case, as it has already been resolved by the Nigeria Police Force. Sharing this post as a “current event” in Ghana causes unnecessary panic and wastes the Cyber Vetting Team’s resources.
