Claim: A claim has gone viral that a Nigerian student studying in the United States of America has been arrested for impregnating four police officers.
Verdict: The claim is false. A keyword search on Google engine search showed that no credible news organisation reported on the incident. The websites that reported on it were mostly in Nigeria and Ghana. It was found that images used to spread the misinformation were not related to the incident.
Full text
A claim has gone viral on the cybersphere in Nigeria, claiming that a Nigerian student studying in the USA has impregnated four police officers.
The claim stated that the student, Jamil Ezebuike, was in the US on a non-immigrant visa and was arrested and risked deportation if found guilty of the act.
While the claim did not state which law was violated or where he was arrested, it was circulated using a collage picture of four women and a picture of a police officer arresting a man in white shirt and black pants.
The claim was widely circulated on news blogs and social media platforms.
Background
Investigations by Daily Trust on Sunday showed that the claim emanated from a TikTok video.
The video had the watermark of the poster, Ibrahimajalo199, who narrated that the Nigerian student “impregnated four female police officers simultaneously. His name is Jamil Ezebuike from Onitsha, Anambra State studying Homeland Security at the Wellington or (Wilmington) University, USA.”
He added that the culprit was “a typical Nigerian who travelled to the USA and studied under the non-immigrant visa as an international student, but unlucky for him, he was arrested. I am trying to figure out which American law he violated as a non-immigrant impregnating officer. He lied to the police officers while dating them undercover.
“One of the police officers in a grey blouse said she did not tell him she was a police officer because lots of people did not like to date police officers. Unfortunately, she did not know he was dating three other police officers.
He has been arrested by security apparatus and he is being investigated, and when found guilty, will be deported back to Nigeria.
The video has been posted on X, formerly Twitter, multiple times, according to its search feature, using the keyword, “Jamil and Ezebuike.” The tweet on the information with the most interaction was posted by an account @Hugo_Chiez, with 34,900 views, 75 retweets and 54 likes.
While the video was posted on December 10, the search feature with the same keyword showed the information first appearing on December 9.
It was posted by the account, @TSJournalnews, the X handle of an online news website, The Street Journal News.
Also, a screenshot of the headline of the information on the website was widely posted by X users, including a former senator of Nigeria and social activist, Shehu Sani
Sen Sani’s had 91,000 views, 979 Likes and a total of 237 retweets. He shared it on his page with the words: “That’s why Nigeria’s population keeps increasing over all other African countries.”
Similarly, the information was picked up by several news websites with a search on Google search engine showing it appeared on.
The similarity on the stories showed it was copy-pasted from The Street Journal news.
Verification
To verify the veracity of the story, the search of the keyframe, “Nigerian arrested for impregnating four female police officers in USA” indicated it appeared on news gossip websites in Nigeria and Ghana.
No credible media organisation reported the information, either in the two countries or in the USA where the incident was stated to have occurred.
An X user, while commenting on the post by Sen Sani, said the story was likely false as “the students name is also fake ‘Jamil Ezebuike’ Muslim and Igbo name, not possible. Plus, the dumb story originated from a fake Ghanian blog. You should do better than spread fake news Mr Senator.”
A search on the name on X and Facebook did not yield any result, which shows the name combination is not in existence.
A reverse image search on the pictures used for the information also showed they were unconnected to the incident.
A search on the image of the man arrested showed it was a Getty image shot in 2003. The caption on the image stated that the arrest was made during a protest in Los Angeles, California during a peaceful protest at the Martin Luther King Day Parade.
The pictures of the women showed that the one on the grey blouse was that of a policewoman, Lyndi Trischler, who sued the Florence Police Department, a city in Texas, for violating the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The picture appeared on a news website in 2014.
Another reverse image search showed the picture of the policewoman in black and white belonging to Jennifer Olivas, a patrol cop with the Marfa Police Department in Texas.
Also, the woman with ginger hair and police uniform was posted on Pinterest in 2015 with the caption “Police wife maternity photos. My daddy fights bad guys”
The last image was a photo-shoot of a widow of Greenville police officer Allen Jacobs, who was killed.
The image of Meghan Jacobs on the website of ABC News had gone viral in 2016 after her husband’s colleagues joined in the photo-shoot.
The poster of the video also claimed the student was studying in Wellington or (Wilmington) University.
A check on Wikipedia showed that there are no schools in New Jersey with such names. However, both an institution with the names is existing in Delaware.
Meanwhile Daily Trust on Sunday reached out to the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) to see whether it received such information on the arrest of a Nigerian student studying in the US on the allegation.
The NiDCOM spokesperson, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, said the commission had not gotten such information.
Not the first rumour of Nigerian arrested for impregnating multiple partners
The account of Jallo could not be found on TikTok as searches on the platform stated that the account did not exist.
Another video of Jallo was found on a blog with the claim that a Nigerian was arrested for impregnating his mother-in-law and sister-in-law in the United Kingdom.
The video appeared to be posted in March this year and was also on The Street Journal news.
The video was attached with the words: “A Nigerian man (names withheld) who was arrested by the United Kingdom (UK) police for impregnating his wife, his wife’s mum and wife’s younger sister, has said he did it to set record. This much was revealed in a viral video sourced online by National Waves.”
“In the said video, the man was said to have allegedly impregnated his wife, his wife’s mother and younger sister at the same time. The incident reportedly happened in the United Kingdom.”
Conclusion
It is evident that the report of a Nigerian student arrested in the US for impregnating four police officers is false. While the information must have been posted by social media to misinform by followers, the pattern of information indicated a subtle pattern of disinformation targeted at Nigerians who have travelled overseas of being promiscuous.
This form of disinformation poses harm on how Nigerians would be viewed in other countries if unverified misinformation is made to go viral by individual accounts and blog sites.
This fact-check was produced in partnership with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD)
