THE video is too graphic to show you here; even in the blurry opening moments, it’s obvious that the woman in the centre of the screen is in distress.

A crowd has formed, jeering at her and filming her anguish on their mobiles. At least two police officers patrol the mob, swatting at their mobile phones with branches in an attempt to stop them from filming.

According to witnesses, the middle-aged woman was a bird moments earlier.

The bird had circled overhead in the town of Oshodi, struck a telephone wire and fallen to the ground, where it transformed into the woman and claimed to be a witch.

“It is unbelievable but it is true,” a witness, known only as Mr Sobowale, told the local newspaper.

“When we spoke to the woman, she claimed to have some magical powers, and had killed several people. She added that she was returning to her husband’s house in Mushin before the incident. So, some people started taking her photographs.”

Footage from the mob has gone viral online, viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube and notching more views quickly. The woman is nearly naked and her flesh is burned and peeling.

Banke Idowu was one of the people who filmed the woman after being asked by a journalist friend in New York to go to the scene.

She was told about the woman’s metamorphosis by other members of the crowd when she arrived, she told BBC Trending.

“I’ve never seen it in real life, but I’ve heard about it and seen it in films, so when they said it happened, I believed it,” Ms Idowu told BBC Trending, adding that if she’d stepped in to help, the crowd would’ve turned on her too.

“Some people may think you belong to the same cult, and they may end up attacking you.”

Police have not shed light on what happened before the mob formed, but a spokesman said the crowd did not attack the woman.

She died soon afterwards anyway and her body was taken to the Mainland General Hospital’s morgue.

Accusations of witchcraft remain common in Nigeria, where magic is embedded in the form of Pentecostal Christianity popular in the country.