05/09/2026
Fact check: Video of UDUS Law Student in Moot Trial Passed off as Nigerian Lawyer in Real Court
By Luqman Kamaldeen Oladayo
Claim: A viral video shows a young man in wig and gown, captioned as a Nigerian lawyer defending his client in court.
Verdict: False. The man in the video is a first-year law student at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS), and the footage was recorded during a university moot court exercise, not a real court proceeding. The video was stripped of context and recirculated to push a false narrative.
Full Text
At about 9:00 a.m. on Sept. 3, 2026, a 20-second video began circulating online showing a young man dressed in wig and gown, appearing to argue vigorously as though addressing a court.
Pen Press UDUS traced the video’s earliest viral appearance to an X account, , which shared the clip with the caption: “The video of a lawyer defending his client in court that has everyone talking on the internet.” As of the time of filing, that post had garnered 1,040 likes, 1,400 views, 109 reposts, and 283 bookmarks.
Roughly an hour later, at about 9:50 a.m. the same day, the video reached a much larger audience when it was reposted by , a Nigeria-based account with over 5.5 million followers, under the caption: “Video of a Nigerian lawyer defending his client in court that has everyone talking.”
As of Sept. 5, 2026, when this report was filed, that repost had amassed 4.7 million views, 14,700 likes, 1,637 reposts, 741 comments, and 6,525 bookmarks.
Reactions in the comments were split roughly evenly between those who accepted the claim and those who challenged it.
Among those who took the caption at face value, wrote: “Look at how this young vibrant lawyer is sweating while on duty, why must everything in Nigeria reflects ‘suffer head’ look at the other one using hand fan chaiii. A nation can’t prosper like this I must tell you. Shalom.”
Another user, , wrote: “My brother… you go do jail. Nothing you wan tell me.”
Other commenters pushed back. asked: “You’re using a 100l student lawyer to try shade the profession or is it the country? Yeye blogger.”
offered a more direct correction: “This is mooting in the university not a proper law court that constitutes qualified lawyers.
This is a moot court.” A user identified as Igwe Manchi pointed to the dress code as a giveaway: “This is not a High Court. It may be a moot court for law students in Uni. The speaker is not even properly dressed.”
The video continued to spread across platforms, amplified by accounts including Insta Blog on X, on Instagram, and NaijaCrazyBlog on Facebook, a page with over 41,000 followers.
Given the pace at which the claim spread and its potential to misrepresent a young law student as a practising lawyer failing under pressure in a real courtroom, Pen Press UDUS investigated the claim to establish the facts.
Verification
Pen Press UDUS identified several inconsistencies that set the video’s setting apart from a conventional courtroom, including the unregulated movement of gallery members to the bar area, a practice not permitted in an actual court.
Among the comments on the viral post, several UDUS law students who recognised the young man began correcting the record.
, identifying himself as the immediate past president of the LAWSAN-UDUS Judiciary Court of Appeal, wrote: “The competition where this guy participated was organized under my leadership as the Head of the Judiciary, Usmanu Danfodiyo University.”
He identified the setting as a moot and mock trial, and named the student in the video as Aristo Kenn, a 100-level student at the time the clip was recorded.
Further investigation traced the original video to TikTok, where it was first posted on Aug. 31, 2026, by user .isah.ke, marking the completion of his first year in the Faculty of Law at UDUS.
The caption read: “Alhamdulilah for the successful completion of the first chapter. Moving to the next segment on the list.”
In an exclusive interview with Pen Press UDUS, Issa Sakariyahu Kehinde, the student seen in the video, confirmed it was recorded during his first appearance at the Caliphate Moot Competition earlier in the semester. He said he recorded the clip to review his own performance and improve his advocacy skills, and posted it to his TikTok page, where it unexpectedly went viral.
He said the video resurfaced on X days later, recontextualised to push a false narrative. “I began receiving calls and messages informing me that my video has been going viral on Twitter with bloggers sharing it,” he said.
Kehinde said the public misread the video, assuming he was a practising lawyer sweating under pressure in a live courtroom. He clarified that he is a law student, and that the footage came from a moot court exercise, an academic simulation designed to train students in legal advocacy and courtroom practice.
Conclusion
The claim that the viral video shows a Nigerian lawyer defending a client in court is false. The man in the video, Issa Sakariyahu Kehinde, is a first-year UDUS law student, and the footage was recorded during a moot court exercise at the Caliphate Moot Competition. The clip was taken out of its academic context and recirculated online to falsely suggest a practising lawyer struggling in a real courtroom.
