IN SHORT: A video is circulating on social media in Nigeria, appearing to show a pastor calling out a younger pastor for stealing his church’s money. But the viral video was generated with Google’s Veo 3 and does not show a real event.
Several Facebook users have posted a video which appears to show a Nigerian pastor calling out a young pastor who, he says, stole the church's money and left the country.
The caption to the video reads, in part: “Youth President (Junior Pastor) ‘japa’ with church money. I suppose that the senior pastor ought to pray for the junior Pastor (being a sinner) who even owned up and promised to pay back within one year instead of raining curses on him. Wonder shall never end!”
Social media audiences in Nigeria often engage deeply with sensational religious content. A story about a pastor calling out a thief is likely to spread quickly and in religious communities, allegations like this can stick even after being disproven.
In Nigerian slang, "japa" means to run away, escape, or flee quickly from a situation. It is also used to describe leaving the country in search of better opportunities, for studies or work, particularly among young Nigerians.
The same video and claim were found here and here. (Note: See more instances at the end of this report.)
But what does the video really show? We checked.
AI-generated video
Some versions of the video show an overlaid TikTok username, Aproko TV.
On the account, which has 24,000 followers, Africa Check found the same video, viewed over 790,000 times.
The caption reads: “finally church youth president has contacted the church from Hungary..”
But the caption also includes the hashtag, #aivideos, suggesting the video was generated using artificial intelligence, or AI, tools.
The video also shows signs of having been created using AI tools.
One of the signs is that the audience in the video does not appear to react naturally to the pastor’s claims. One would expect such a contentious speech to draw reactions – surprise, laughter or even anger – from the audience. But the audience appears to be mostly silent, with the occasional stilted exclamation not sounding like it comes from them. This strange audio is a red flag.
Another sign is that while some of the audience members appear to move naturally, some stand still throughout the video. This could be a result of the creator underprompting the audience.
Underprompting an AI tool means not giving enough detail, clarity or context in the prompt, or input into the system, which can lead to flawed outputs.
The video is made up of a combination of short clips that last less than 10 seconds each. All the clips restart from the same angle.
AI video generation tools tend to produce short clips. For example, Google Veo 3 produces eight-second clips while MidJourney makes five-second videos. To create a longer video, users have to stitch each clip together.
Veo 3 is Google’s latest text-to-video model, while MidJourney, popular for image generation, recently extended into video with an early version that produces clips.
The text on the screen behind the pastor is also unreadable and does not appear to be written in a recognisable alphabet, which is a flaw of AI video generation tools such as Veo 3.
The account also features many similar videos of a pastor speaking to the congregation. Some of the videos feature a Veo 3 watermark at the bottom right, strikingly similar to the video circulating on Facebook, but lasting for exactly eight seconds. These, like the video circulating on Facebook, were generated using AI, specifically Google Veo 3.
To learn more about how to spot videos generated with Veo 3, read our guide.
The same video was found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
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