In short, some Facebook users have posted a video claiming that a young Fulani boy is eating a human arm. However, there is no evidence that the boy is a Fulani or that the flesh is not a monkey, and perhaps not a baboon.
A video shows a young boy who looks like a burnt human arm is being distributed online in Nigeria.
One such post, published on April 12, 2025, stated, “The Fulani boy eating human flesh… God has mercy.
A clip of a woman commenting on the boy’s actions is overlaid on the original footage in the video.
Fulani are a dispersed group of cattle herdsmen scattered across West Africa. In Nigeria, conflicts between Fulani pastoralists and agricultural communities are escalating due to competition over land and resources.
The group is also linked to armed attacks, tricks and bandits, but there is no evidence that all Fulani are involved in criminal activity.
Eating human meat by humans is called cannibalism. Although habits are widely popular throughout history, they are considered taboo in most modern societies.
The video, which has been viewed over a million times, was posted with a Yoruba caption.
Yoruba is an ethnic group and lives primarily in southwestern Nigeria.
The same video was here and here. (Note: See the instance at the end of this report.)
But does the video show a Fulani boy eating human flesh? I checked.
The video could have been born in Tanzania
Africa Check split the video into frames and performed a Google reverse image search. I found a video on YouTube where the same boy wearing the same jersey captioned, “A Hutzbeh boy preparing a baboon barbecue deep in the forest.”
Living in the Tanzania country of East Africa, the Hazbes are widely known for their nomadic lifestyle, reliance on hunting and food gatherings, and unique cultural practices.
Videos of Hatsbe, which eat rare animals, especially other primates, are popular on social media.
The flesh the boy in the video is eating looks like a human arm, but other primate body parts are likely to be mistaken for humans, especially when burnt. Primates are a group of mammals, including monkeys, apes and humans. Baboons are a type of monkey.
Sign up for the AllAfrica newsletter for free
Get the latest African news
success!
Almost finished…
You need to check your email address.
Follow the instructions in the email you sent to complete the process.
error!
There was a problem processing the submission. Please try again later.
The viral video features tags that indicate a Fulani boy, similar to Instagram or Tiktok, or a vertical video clip in short format.
Some Facebook users repost the video, and some people have been zoomed in or blocked in their original source details, the “reel” tag indicates that they have found the original video on Facebook.
I then searched YouTube video captions on Facebook search engines. This led to more than 378,000 users following Page Hadzabe Lifestyle. The page featured a video of a boy preparing something called “Babi BBQ” in the caption on April 10th.
A thorough manual search of the reel page led to the reels that were finally posted on April 8th.
African checks cannot check whether the language spoken in the video is the language of the people of Hatsbe, but those who speak hula have confirmed to us that the language is not the language of the people of Fulani.
Also, while we cannot ultimately say where the video was filmed or what it shows, there is no evidence from Nigeria or evidence of cannibalism. Eating baboon meat is not uncommon, so it could be a boy in society.
The same claim was here.
