A viral message purporting to be a security alert from the State Security Service (SSS), also known as the Department of State Service (DSS), has been circulating across social media platforms, particularly WhatsApp. The message, with the heading “SSS office Abuja BREAKING NEWS! Security alert!!,” claimed a “mass arrival of BOKO HARAM Fighters to Southern / Northern central Nigeria, especially to LAGOS/ILORIN and RIVERS.” It also included a list of “police control numbers of each state in Nigeria.”
However, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) War Room has fact-checked and debunked this viral message as fake, confirming that it did not originate from the SSS/DSS.
The report stated, “The CDD War Room reached out to the Department of State Service (DSS) to verify the authenticity of the viral broadcast message, we were informed that the viral message did not emanate from the Department of State Service (DSS)/ State Security Service (SSS) and that citizens ‘disregard the message, that’s complete fake news.'”
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The CDD War Room took additional steps to verify the veracity of the message.
“We took a step further by contacting the numbers attached to the broadcast message. We found that the telephone numbers are attached to the various state’s Police Control Room and the telephone numbers were copied from a previously circulated broadcast message for people to reach the police command across the states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),” the report revealed.
Furthermore, the CDD War Room identified inconsistencies in the content of the viral message, such as the use of abbreviations and misspelled words, which raised doubts about its authenticity.
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“For instance, a sentence read ‘This is y military patrol teams has been rooled out to mount strategic points in d states and cities mentioned Pls pass on to other friends & family members, especially those residing in PH, ilorin and Lagos.’ In this sentence, some words like ‘y’ ‘d’ ‘pls’ ‘PH’ were abbreviated, while words like ‘rooled’ is spelt wrongly,” the report noted.
Based on their findings, the CDD War Room concluded with a verdict: “FALSE. The CDD War Room found that the viral message is fake and did not originate from the SSS/DSS. We found that the telephone numbers attached to the broadcast message belong to the 36 states’ Police Control Room and were copied from a previously circulated broadcast message.”
