September 27, 2025
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Nigeria: Ignore Faked Images of Attack On Nigeria’s Central Bank

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PublishedJanuary 22, 2025
Nigeria: Ignore Faked Images of Attack On Nigeria’s Central Bank

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Ignore faked images of attack on Nigeria’s central bank

IN SHORT: Several photos have been posted on social media with the claim that they show an attack on Nigeria’s central bank. However, the images were generated using social media platform X’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok.

Several Facebook posts claim that the Central Bank of Nigeria, or CBN, has been attacked.

The CBN is Nigeria’s top financial institution. It is pivotal in the country’s financial and economic management.

The posts feature several images of the supposed aftermath: the damaged interior and exterior of the building, the bank’s logo on the building and emergency responders at the scene.

Part of one machine-translated post written in Hausa, the language widely spoken in northern Nigeria, reads: “An attack on Nigeria’s major bank in Abuja, where many people are being threatened with 100 billion dollars.”

The post also claims that the incident took place on Christmas Day, 25 December 2024.

A comment under the post said the government carried out the attack to relocate the CBN’s headquarters to Lagos in the country’s southwest. The CBN is currently headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

The same photos have also been accompanied by other claims, such as: “The Central Bank of Nigeria was completely destroyed by the suicide bomber on Christmas Day.”

In early 2024, the CBN restructured, with some fired workers turning to the courts.

Similar posts can be found here, here, here and here.

But has there been an attack on the bank? We checked.

AI-generated images

There are no credible reports of the CBN being attacked, which is the first sign that the claim could be false. Matters concerning the apex bank are widely reported in the media, as seen when its ex-staff sued it.

Another sign is that the landscape in the images differs from that surrounding the CBN in Abuja.

All the photos carry a “Grok” watermark. Grok is a generative artificial intelligence tool that is part of the social media platform X owned by Elon Musk. The watermark means that the photos have been generated by Grok.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, uses complex computer algorithms to perform tasks otherwise done by humans, like answering questions and writing code. One task it’s really good at is creating images from scratch based on simple instructions.

Verifying AI-generated images

Generative AI tools are becoming more advanced, making it difficult to tell which ones are real. But there are still signs you can look out for:

  • Check for a watermark: Take a few seconds to scrutinise suspicious images to ensure they have no watermarks. Some AI tools require users to subscribe to exclude watermarks in the image, so looking for watermarks may not be enough.
  • Look for it online: Carry out a reverse image search of the particular image you suspect to be AI-generated. If you find it in different contexts, published at different times, it may mean the image is, in fact, legit.
  • Compare with genuine images: Try to identify details that you can compare with, if the image depicts a real place. The posts have images of Nigeria’s central bank, but the landscape and background details give it away. If an image is meant to show an actual person or place, details like facial features and landscapes should match.