Did the leaders of the coup d'etat in Niger threaten to shoot the Finance Minister if he didn't account for the missing money his government wasted - and was he shown crying in a video? No, that's not true; this video is an old recording from two years ago of a different Nigerian official and has nothing to do with the coup the country is currently witnessing.
The story appeared in multiple posts on Tiktok, like this video (archived here), published on July 30, 2023. It opened with Arabic text:
"This is Niger's Finance Minister, he was given 48 hours to account for the money lost or face execution by shooting"
Translated from Arabic to English by Lead Stories staff.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Aug 1 13:29:57 2023 UTC)
The junta, which took power in Niger on July 26, did not ask Finance Minister Ahmat Jidoud to account for the wasted money or face death by shooting. The video used in the post is of the former Justice minister Marou Amadou published on Facebook on Dec. 27, 2021, showing the outgoing Justice Minister crying as he thanks President Mahamadou Issoufou for trusting him with the post after the country elected a new president, and a new government was being formed.
