Oyo state map. Image source: The Guardian.
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Claim: A Facebook user shared a video suggesting it showed youth in Oyo State moving into the bush to rescue the abducted school children and teachers.
Verdict: False. The video does not show Oyo youth on a rescue mission, but local hunters in Gombe State during a Sallah celebration held in honour of the Emir of Gombe.
Full Text
Since the abduction of school children in Oyo and Maiduguri, many Nigerians have kept a close watch on news reports and social media for updates. In that rush for information, however, old videos and unverified claims have continued to circulate online.
DUBAWA has debunked such claims here, here, here and here.
Recently, a Facebook user shared a video (archived here) claiming it showed youths in Oyo state moving to the bush in numbers to rescue the abducted school children and teachers.
The caption attached to the video reads, “The vibrant youths of Ogbomosho in Oyo state have angrily entered the bush for the rescue of those 39 school children and 7 teachers abducted by bandits in Ogbomosho, Oyo state of Nigeria recently.”
The 14-second video shows a crowd of men marching forward, holding up and firing guns into the sky.
DUBAWA heard a male voice in the video saying, “Nagode,” which translates to “Thank you.” Otherwise, the only other sounds were chants from the crowd. Seeing this is a Hausa word spoken in a context where you would normally expect Yoruba made the video suspicious.
As of June 22, 2026, the post had received 7 likes, one comment, and one share.
Although this specific post didn’t get much engagement, DUBAWA traced the same claim to other accounts on Instagram and Facebook, here, here, and here.
One post, shared by the @Genevive Nnaji fans group, featured the same video and garnered over 49,000 likes, 2,800 comments, 2,500 shares, and more than 2 million views.
We looked through the comments to gauge users’ reactions.
One @Tunga Stanley, for instance, said, “The bandits have AK-47 rifles and chain cutters, while you guys are carrying Dane guns? I pray for your safety. Those bandits need to be eliminated from this planet.”
@Blessed Nnewuni replied, “Go and meet the Governor or the Nigerian police to give you good guns.”
@Usisskills TV commented, “ If this had happened a few hours after the incident, it would have worked, not weeks after. You all should go back home.”
With public attention fixed on the recent abductions and the video circulating across multiple social media accounts, DUBAWA saw the need to verify this video.
Verification
DUBAWA began by using InVID to extract keyframes from the video. After that, we conducted reverse image searches on the extracted frames, which led us to multiple social media posts featuring the same footage but presenting a different narrative.
This Instagram post from two weeks ago described the video as showing youth from Gombe State set out in response to insecurity in their communities. Another Facebook account on June 13, 2026, shared the same narrative.
This was insufficient to establish the video’s context, so we searched for reports confirming whether such an incident occurred in Gombe. Our search led us to a Punch newspaper report published on June 7, 2026.
In the report, the Gombe State Police Command, through its spokesperson, ASP Buhari Abdullahi, stated that the footage had no link to any security operation. He explained that the video showed local hunters participating in a Sallah procession held in honour of the Emir of Gombe, during which celebratory gunfire was part of the cultural display.
The same report was also published by other news platforms, here and here.
DUBAWA checked but did not find any credible report or official statement linking the footage to Oyo State or confirming that youths mobilised into the bush to rescue abducted school children. Available evidence instead points to a different event entirely, suggesting that the claim misrepresents the video’s context.
Conclusion
The video does not show youths in Oyo State rescuing abducted school children. Evidence shows it captures local hunters in Gombe State during a Sallah celebration in honour of the Emir of Gombe, not a rescue operation. Thus, the claim is false.
