This Facebook post supposedly of a man who committed suicide to avoid deportation to Nigeria is FALSE.

The post reads: “A man committed suicide inside Heathrow airport insted of being deported back to Nigeria, that’s how bad and dejected the system has become. If there’s anytime to pray for our dear country it is now. Judiciary must save us from total collapse!”

A Google reverse image search of a screenshot from the video established that it dates back to 2018 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the USA.

The video was featured in a 1 March 2018 Fox News article with the headline, “Man jumps over railing at Atlanta airport, sustains serious injuries.”

Fox News reported: “A man who launched himself off a second-floor walkway at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is said to have sustained serious injuries during the harrowing fall.”

Another report on the incident states the person, identified as “32-year-old Kyle Phillips, appeared to be intoxicated and began threatening other travellers outside the Terrapin Brewery in Concourse D.” There is no mention of his nationality or destination.

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post supposedly of a man who committed suicide to avoid deportation to Nigeria and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.