Fact-check: Was a traditional wedding interrupted by a jealous ex-boyfriend in Juba?

A reverse image search returned results of the same pictures first related to an event in Nigeria in February 2020.

Writer: Jibi Moses

A Facebook post by a page called Charliebrain.com claiming that a wedding in South Sudan was disrupted because the bride’s ex-boyfriend stormed the ceremony with thugs is false.

The post, which was published on November 18th, 2022, claimed that the ex-boyfriend was demanding the $5,000 he spent on his now ex-girlfriend.

“Just in: South Sudanese boyfriend arrives with thugs and disrupts the traditional marriage of his ex, claiming he wants a refund of all he spends on his ex, and everything sums up to $5000,” the post reads.

The page describes itself as a TV channel and has 135000 likes and 138 followers.

Is it true, however, that such an incident has recently been reported in South Sudan? Here’s what we discovered:

The screenshot of the claim as posted by the Charliebrian.com page.

A reverse image search using RevEye on the images returns results from Yandex and Google, indicating that several Nigerian bloggers first used these images in February 2020.

And an article was published by Face of Malawi with the heading Man Disrupts Ex-girlfriend’s Marriage, Demands for N22 million in Nigeria. Other similar articles include this, this, and this.

Besides, no credible media and bloggers have reported such an incident of wedding interruption in South Sudan recently.

Some of the screenshots from the search 

Conclusion:

211 Check finds this claim false. According to media reports, the images were first taken in Nigeria in February 2022, when a traditional wedding was interrupted by an ex-boyfriend, but not in Juba. 

This fact check was published by 211 Check with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and the African Fact-Checking Alliance.