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Photo of kids sitting in flooded mud classroom from Kenya, not Nigeria’s Bayelsa state

Does a photo show a flooded mud-built classroom at a school in Bayelsa, a state in southern Nigeria?

No, but that’s the claim in a post published on Facebook in Nigeria in May 2019.

The post shows school kids sitting on bricks as muddy rainwater runs through their classroom.

Its text reads: “A school in Bayelsa State. Bayelsa has just eight local government areas, receives 13 percent derivation [fund] and like every other state in Nigeria, Bayelsa has three senators. Not forgetting, one of the senators has common sense, but the sense is limited to only twitter. Senator Ben Bruce, should we blame FG?”

In Nigeria, the derivation fund gives 13% of the money the central federal government – or FG – earns from natural resources to the states and regions that produce these resources. Bayelsa is one of the country’s oil rich states.

Ben Murray-Bruce is a member of the Peoples Democratic Party and was a senator representing the Bayelsa East constituency. Murray-Bruce is known for his “common sense” videos and tweets, which are often critical of the All Progressives Congress-led central government.



School in Kenya’s Kilifi county


A reverse image search finds the photo of the flooded classroom in an article on Kenyan news site the Star. Its headline reads: “Uproar as Kilifi children taught in flooded classroom”.

The article and another in Kenyan Daily reveal that the classroom is at Mangororo Primary School in Jaribuni ward, in the Ganze sub-county of Kilifi county.

The children, in grade 1 and class 5, usually learn outside under trees but during torrential rains in Kilifi in May 2019, they had to shelter in what passes for a classroom, according to the report by Elias Yaa, the Star's correspondent. – Motunrayo Joel (05/05/19)




 

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