A viral video circulating on Facebook, with 5100 shares, 1600 comments, 15000 reactions and over one million views, claims that Brigadier General Pelene Francois has announced his refusal to arrest Issa Tchiroma Bakary, stating that “the role of the army is to defend the nation not to mingle in internal politics”.
Context:
A 6 second video clip has gone viral on social media, purporting to show Brigadier General Francois Pelene, in an interview announcing that he will not arrest Issa Tchiroma Bakary, one of 12 contenders for the October 12 presidential election in Cameroon. In the video, he appears to say “the role of the army is to defend the nation not to mingle in internal politics”, and that “he will not arrest Issa Tchiroma”.
The video emerged just days after the constitutional council’s official proclamation of the presidential election results amidst post electoral protests in Douala, Ngoundere, Garoa and Maroua, with Issa Tchiroma claiming he won the election.
The video has been widely shared on facebook, whatsapp and tiktok, with accompanying messages thanking the general for siding with the population and calling on other top ranking officials to resist any orders to arrest Issa Tchiroma.
Verification
A close observation of the video shows several inconsistencies that point to the use of artificial intelligence tools to create the video.
- Lip sync mismatch:
The movement of his lips in the video does not perfectly align with spoken words. His tongue still vibrates even when he pauses for a while.
- Visual distortions:
The right ear of the general disappears and at some point it reappears.
There is the usual blurriness around his lips.
On his right arm, a flag similar to that of Egypt appears. We compared it with other official pictures and deduced that Cameroonian soldiers put on only the Cameroonian Flag and the different symbols according to their corps.
Also the edges of the video remain unevenly blurred.
- No official record of the speech also exists.
After physical observation of the video, 237check.org found the video to be 82.7% AI generated after analysing using Hive AI Detector.
To date, while no source at the Ministry of Defense of Cameroon (MINDEF) has confirmed these statements, there has been no official information regarding the arrest of Issa Tchiroma, candidate who declared himself the winner of the October 12, 2025 presidential election.
Verdict
The viral video claiming that Brigadier General Pelene Francois refused to arrest Issa Tchiroma is not authentic. It was generated using AI deepfake tools to mimic the general for the purpose of propaganda.
