The Federal Road Safety Corps and the Gombe State Police Command have debunked a viral social media claim alleging that prospective National Youth Service Corps members travelling to the NYSC orientation camp in Gombe were involved in a fatal road crash.
The post, which circulated widely on Thursday, claimed that 16 prospective corps members died while two others sustained critical injuries and were taken to an undisclosed hospital. It did not provide the location of the alleged crash or the identities of the supposed victims.
FRSC Public Relations Officer in Gombe, Janet Kassa, dismissed the report as false, describing it as a deliberate attempt to cause panic.
“I have checked with my colleagues there is no indication this happened in Gombe,” she said. “I made a series of calls across units and commands to authenticate the report, but there is no sign. This may be one of those posts created just to get comments and views.”
Similarly, the spokesperson for the Gombe State Police Command, DSP Buhari Abdullahi, said there was no record of such an incident in any part of the state.
“As I speak, from morning till now, there are no findings to support that report,” he said. “There was no mention of the hospital where victims were taken or the exact location of the supposed crash.”
NYSC Gombe PRO, Jennifer Laha, also faulted the authenticity of the circulating photographs, suggesting they appeared computer-generated.
“From the pictures I saw, they looked AI-generated. The misspellings and inconsistencies make them suspicious,” she said. “Besides, NYSC does not provide buses to transport prospective corps members to orientation camps.”
While a similar incident was recorded in Ebonyi State earlier in January, authorities in Gombe insist that no accident involving prospective corps members has been reported this week.
The public has been advised to disregard the viral claim and rely on verified information from official sources.
