A CLIP SHOWING a Nigerian woman eating food has been shared widely, along with claims that wrongly suggest she is an asylum seeker living off the government.

The video is a piece of satire, made by a woman with a full-time job who has been living in Ireland for years, in response to racist assumptions about her.

“Another good day to eat a free meal in free Ireland,” the woman says as she sits at a table, forking a chip from the plate in front of her. “All of this paid for by taxpayers.”

While the wording and setup of the video may have suggested sarcasm, edited versions of her video were shared widely on social media, along with outraged comments and false claims about the woman.

“You are paying your taxes and working your fingers to the bone so that this new-to-the-parish African woman can eat and live for free at your expense,” anti-immigration commentator Derek Domino says in videos posted to his social media accounts.

A version of Domino’s video on Facebook has been viewed more than 233,000 times since being posted on 5 October.

“They get everything for free. Free food. Free money. Free housing. All of you people who pay taxes. You’re feeding her mouth,” Instagram anti-immigrant commentator Darren Bradley says in a video viewed more than 234,000 times since being posted on 5 October.

Both of these users have been previously fact-checked by The Journal for spreading misinformation targeted at migrants.

Versions of the video have also been viewed more than 650,000 times on X, where people heaped scorn on the woman, who they claimed was “an African scammer laughing at the taxpayers for providing her with free food, a free home”.

However, the video was a piece of satire.

Although International Protection applicants living in asylum centres are provided with free meals, this video was not filmed at such a centre.

The full video, posted to the Nigerian woman’s TikTok account on 4 October, shows additional details that indicate it was shot in a Dunnes Stores café in Clondalkin.

The background of the video, compared to a photo of the Clondalkin café.

Further, the original video showed a message onscreen that the woman was responding to. That message read “When are you returning?” along with emojis of aeroplanes, seemingly suggesting that she emigrate from Ireland to Nigeria.

A caption underneath, written by the woman, reads: “Not anytime soon. Still enjoying FREE meals here.”

Many of the woman’s other videos are similarly sarcastic on the issue of her being in Ireland.

“Just to quickly answer your question,” she says in another video posted on the same day. “I came to Ireland from Nigeria on this bicycle. I rode this bicycle.”

Much of her other content references her job in a library.

In a video she made subsequently, she says that the taxpayer who paid for the meal was her.

“I am the taxpayer,” she says. “The taxpayer is me.”

The woman, identified as Grace, has since appeared on an episode of the podcast Opinions Matter with Adrian & Jeremy, in which she says she has lived in Ireland for a decade and that she is working full-time and paying taxes.

She said that her TikTok account was initially just about her day-to-day life, but that she started making satirical videos in response to assumptions being made about her due to her ethnicity, as well as abuse, including vandalism on her home.

When asked what she thought of her detractors sharing the video, she said she was “shocked and embarrassed for them” for taking it seriously.

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