Old video of Ghana fire festival falsely linked to Kenyan tax bill protests
As Kenya faced deadly protests over a hugely unpopular tax hike bill in June, reports surfaced of police opening fire on protesters in the Githurai 45 area on the outskirts of the capital Nairobi. Social media users shared a viral clip of people carrying fire torches, alleging it showed a night vigil held in the aftermath of the alleged shooting. But the claim is false: a video analysis confirmed the footage was filmed at a fire festival in Ghana and posted on TikTok in 2022.
The 15-second footage was shared in an X post on June 26, 2024.
“Githurai right now,” the caption reads. “Who is killing innocent Kenyans and why...???”.
The video has received over 200,000 views and more than 2,000 reshares.
In the clip, people carrying fire torches at night walk along a street as onlookers record the scenes from a balcony.
“Happening now: Githurai 45 candle lighting,” reads a caption on a Facebook Reel showing the same footage.
The claim was repeated elsewhere on Twitter and Facebook.
Anti-tax protests
Rallies in Kenya turned deadly on June 25 as protesters breached parliament where legislators were voting on the passage of the 2024 Finance Bill. The tax law proposal was designed to usher in new duties and levies on a range of commodities, including staple goods.
Amid mounting unrest, President William Ruto eventually announced the bill’s withdrawal.
The youth-led demonstrations were mostly peaceful at first, with thousands marching in Nairobi and elsewhere in the country against the proposed tax increases.
But tensions flared sharply when police officers fired live rounds on crowds that later ransacked the parliament complex.
AFP journalists saw three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground near parliament (archived here).
As the chaos escalated and crowds started leaving the city centre, reports circulated of heavy police deployment and live rounds being fired in Githurai 45, a short distance outside Nairobi.
The Law Society of Kenya called for an investigation into the alleged shootings, dubbed the “Githurai massacre” (archived here).
Newspapers spoke of confusion and the use of deadly force: headlines like “Inside night of terror for Githurai residents” and “Conflicting death toll, pain and agony as families search for their loved ones” were used to describe the events in Githurai (archived here and here).
However, the video of a crowd marching with tiki torches does not show a night vigil in Githurai.
Fire Festival
Using the verification tool InVID WE Verify, we located the same video on TikTok here and here, published on August 8, 2022 (archived here and here).
“Annual Dagomba fire festival Ghana,” reads one post. The Dagomba are an ethnic group.
In one of the TikTok clips, onlookers use Dagbani, a widely spoken language in northern Ghana.
According to reports in Ghana (see here, here and here), the festival is known as Bugum Chugu and is celebrated annually in the first month of the Dagomba lunar year (archived here, here and here).
The celebration is marked with singing, dancing, drumming and the waving of flaming torches made of grass.
AFP Fact Check previously debunked the same video when it circulated in Burkina Faso alongside claims that it showed a pan-African march.
The owner of this TikTok account confirmed at the time that the clip was recorded in Yendi, a town in northern Ghana.
