No, US president Donald Trump has not ordered the release of popular Nigerian traditional doctor Akwa Okuko. Video is manipulated
IN SHORT: A video doing rounds on social media in Nigeria shows US president Donald Trump allegedly ordering the release of traditional doctor Akwa Okuko. But the video was created using artificial intelligence.
US president Donald Trump has ordered Charles Soludo, the governor of Nigeria's Anambra state, to release Akwa Okuko from detention. That's according to a video doing the rounds on Facebook in Nigeria.
In the video, Trump can be heard saying: "I, Donald Trump, is giving the governor of Anambra state one week to release Akwa Okuko. He is a great philanthropist that has helped many people even more than the government."
Anambra state is in southeastern Nigeria.
Chidozie Nwangwu, popularly known as Akwa Okuko, is a traditional doctor.
In January 2025, the Anambra state government announced that it had enacted a new law criminalising the use of "anti-bullet charms and rituals."
In early February, the government posted a video of Okuko's arrest on its official X and Facebook pages.
In the video, Okuko is questioned by Onyeka Ibezim, the deputy governor of Anambra state, about Oke Ite, an allegedly evil pot used in a money ritual. Okuko says he stopped doing Oke Ite rituals.
Okuko has since been detained by the Agunechemba, the state's security agency, for further investigation.
More posts claiming Trump has ordered Okuko's release can be found here, here, here, here and here.
But is this true? We checked.
Manipulated video
Africa Check broke the video into keyframes and ran them through Google reverse image search. This led us to the original video of Trump, posted to YouTube on 30 January 2025. The suspicious video and the original video share several similarities: Trump's clothing, the blue background showing the White House logo, and the US flag.
In the original video, Trump was talking about the January collision between an American Airlines jet and an army helicopter in Washington DC. He makes no mention of Okuko.
While the original video is 17 minutes and 33 seconds long, the manipulated version is 57 seconds long. The podium seen in the original video appears to have been cropped from the doctored version. Misinformation actors typically post short videos due to the time and skill required to create convincing longer ones.
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We also ran the video through the video analysis tool Deepware, and the tool said it was 89% likely that the video was fake.
A deepfake is a type of video in which someone, often a public figure, is impersonated using artificial intelligence tools to make it look as if the person is saying or doing something they haven't said or done.
If Trump had made such a statement about Nigerian domestic politics, it would have made headlines, but we found no news reports on it.
We also searched Trump's official social media pages and found nothing related to the claim.
For tips on how to spot deepfake and out-of-context videos and media, read our guide here.
