Claim
Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo’s car somersaults on Abuja airport road.
Full Text
An online media platform Peoples Gazette @GazetteNGR posted a tweet claiming that vice-president Yemi Osinbajo got involved in an accident on his way to Owo, Ondo state to pay a condolence visit to the victims of the Owo church attack.
“BREAKING: Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s car somersaults on Abuja Airport Road.”
Hours after the post was tweeted, it generated 441 retweets, 459 quote tweets and 575 likes giving an account that has resulted to have misinformed the public.
Reactions
A Twitter user @AbeebFajobi says: “I still don’t understand if misinformation and fake reports will give us any solution to our problems.
You guys at PG keep doing this, why not confirm before posting/reporting. I’m sure the editor and the publisher are youths, why are we doing worst, we should do better.”
in the same vein, a WhatsApp user posted the news on her WhatsApp status with a caption:
“This man has escaped death a couple of times”
Another Twitter user @winoski01 tweeted after the post was deleted on the @GazetteNGR Twitter account. The tweet reads:
“Always verify your news please before posting, your previous report stated the VP car somersaulted instead the VP halted to rescue accident victims.”
Conclusion
The news that Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo was involved in a road accident and his car somersaulted on Abuja Airport Road is false and should be discarded.
Verification
About 2 hours after the misinformation has been in circulation on Twitter and other social media accounts like WhatsApp, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo took to his Twitter account @ProfOsinbajo to discard the false information spreading around.
According to the tweet which was accompanied with images from the accident scene, “I was not involved in an accident. On my way to the airport, we ran into an accident scene. My security and medical teams assisted in moving the victims of the crash from the scene. They have been transported to the airforce base hospital.”
Also, a recheck on People’s Gazette Twitter page @GazetteNGR reveals that the media outlet has released an updated story with an editor’s note to correct the false claim that Mr Osinbajo was the victim of the accident, and highlighted that the previous tweet has been deleted. The tweet reads:
“Vice President Yemi Osinbajo rescues people involved in a car accident on Abuja Airport Road”
“Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct our initial report that Mr Osinbajo was the victim of the accident”.
The previous tweet has since been deleted.