Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps on Wednesday denied reports that 16 prospective National Youth Service Corps members died in a road crash while travelling to Gombe state.
A viral social media post had claimed the accident killed 16 people and left two others critically injured.
Janet Kassa, spokesperson for the FRSC in Gombe, told local media there was no record of any such incident in the state. She said checks across units and commands showed “no indication this happened in Gombe, not to mention that it even occurred,” urging the public to disregard the report.
Officials of the NYSC in Gombe also dismissed the circulating images, calling them suspicious.
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We contacted Adeyemi Federal University of Education in Ondo state, where the corps members were alleged to have departed from. School officials said they did not know about any crash involving their students.
The NYSC program requires new graduates to travel across Nigeria for mandatory national service, often over long distances and in commercial vehicles. Several fatal accidents involving prospective and serving corps members have been recorded in recent years, prompting repeated warnings from the NYSC against night travel and unsafe routes.
In January 2025, four people were killed when a 14-seater bus conveying corps members to an orientation camp in Ebonyi state collided with a parked truck.
