Nigeria’s economic crisis has left many people struggling to put food on the table. A video shared on X claims to show hungry Nigerians scrambling for free bread, causing a bakery’s roof to collapse as the crowd climbed onto it. However, this is false. The video was filmed in India during a Muslim procession in July 2024.
“People climbed on the roof of the bakery just to beg for bread and they ended up destroying the building,” reads part of an X post published on February 25, 2025.
Screenshot showing the false post, taken March 7, 2025
Shared more than 900 times, the post includes a 17-second video clip showing more than a dozen people falling from a building’s roof as it collapses above a large crowd thronging the street below.
The caption suggests the clip was filmed outside a bakery in Nigeria’s Ogun state during a free bread handout.
Millions of Nigerians are struggling with deepening poverty, forcing many to rely on food aid and charity to survive.
In December 2024, dozens died after stampedes marred food and charity distributions across the country (archived here).
However, the video of the collapsing roof is unrelated to Nigeria.
Muharram accident
By listening closely to the sound in the video, AFP Fact Check detected people in the crowd yelling “Oh teri!” multiple times.
The phrase, according to our correspondents in India, is an informal Hindi slang expression that conveys shock, surprise, or disbelief (archived here).
Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes in the video, AFP Fact Check found a clip showing the same scene — but shot from a different angle (archived here).
It was published on an Instagram page called “bellarymerijaan” on July 18, 2024.
Bellary (or Ballari) is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka.
According to the Instagram video’s caption, it shows an incident that “occurred during the farewell of Server Hussain in Bellary”, adding that “many injuries were reported”.
“Some people have broken their legs, and one person’s head was damaged. Pray for their recovery.”
Both videos feature the same collapsed blue roof and two red and blue umbrellas among the crowd.
Comparison showing similarities between the 2024 video published on Instagram (left) and the clip in the claim
AFP Fact Check contacted the Instagram account’s owner. They confirmed that the video was shot on July 18, 2024 — the same day it was posted — during a procession for Muharram.
Muharram is considered the second-holiest month in Islam after Ramadan. It includes a 10-day mourning period for the murder of Hazrat Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (archived here).
In 2024, Muharram started on July 7 and ended on July 17.
The same video was also published on YouTube with the title “Bellary Muharram incident 2024//Sarvar huseni” (archived here).
Local broadcaster NewsFirstKannada reported on the accident on July 18, 2024, explaining that the roof of the building collapsed because too many people climbed onto it (archived here).
“During the Muharram procession, a roof collapsed as people were standing on it, causing several individuals to fall. Fortunately, a major disaster was averted,” the journalist said in Kannada, Karnataka’s main language.
He added that the incident “occurred on the bypass road on the outskirts of Ballari. Hundreds of people had climbed onto the roof, and the excessive weight proved too much for the structure to bear, leading to its collapse. One person sustained serious injuries in the incident”.