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A popular Dambe traditional martial art champion nicknamed Ebola for his ability to subdue opponents inside the ring, Abdurrazak Abdulmumin, has passed away.

Ebola died in Abuja, on Sunday, and was buried in accordance with Islamic rites, on Monday.

Known for his towering stature and devastating left-handed blows, Ebola was one of the greatest Dambe warriors of all time.

Though of Sokoto descent, he was born and raised in Kaduna State.

He lost mother at a young age and grew up to become one of the notable figures in Nigeria’s traditional martial arts scene.

Abdulmumin’s rising stardom coincided with the outbreak of the Ebola virus.

He was subsequently nicknamed after the disease, as he continued to defeat gods of the ring across Nigeria.

Some of Ebola’s celebrated victories came during fierce clashes against Bahagon Shagon Yansanda and Garkuwan Cindo a birnin Kebbi, where he defeated both fighters to win a car.

His winning streaks extended all the way to the deadly arenas of Adamawa.

Thereafter, Ebola won a gold representing Kano State at a martial arts competition championship in Abuja.

His extraordinary performances eventually led to competitions in several African countries.

He is survived by a wife and relatives.

There is a point at which political contestation ceases to be an argument about ideas and becomes an assault on the very boundaries that make civil society possible. That point is reached when a private telephone conversation is allegedly recorded, extracted from its original context and released into the public domain as political ammunition.

The latest controversy surrounding an audio recording purported to be a telephone conversation between Senator Godswill Akpabio and Sandra C. Duru, a.k.a. Professor Mgbeke, therefore deserves to be examined beyond the personalities involved. It raises a much larger question: What happens to a society when private conversations become raw material for public propaganda?

Recent reports indicate that Sandra Duru released a nine-minute audio recording on social media and presented portions of it as a private conversation involving the Senate President. Yet, significantly, the recording has not been independently authenticated, and questions remain about the identity of the voices, the circumstances in which the conversation was recorded, and whether the excerpts constitute the complete conversation. Those uncertainties are not minor technicalities; they are at the heart of responsible public communication.

PRIVACY IS NOT A POLITICAL LUXURY

Nigeria’s Constitution is unequivocal in recognising privacy as a fundamental right. Section 37 guarantees and protects the privacy of citizens, including their homes, correspondence and telephone conversations. That constitutional safeguard does not disappear because the individuals involved are politicians, public officials, activists or controversial personalities. Indeed, public office should never be interpreted as a wholesale surrender of personal privacy.

The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 reinforces this principle by establishing a legal framework for protecting personal information and regulating its processing. Among its stated objectives are the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, the safeguarding of personal data, and the requirement that personal data be processed in a fair, lawful and accountable manner.

The central question, therefore, is not whether an audio recording can generate political excitement; it obviously can. The question is whether private communication can be captured, processed, edited, reproduced and disseminated for political purposes without lawful justification, proper authorisation or regard for the rights of the people whose voices and personal information are involved. That is a much more serious question.

THE CYBER DIMENSION CANNOT BE IGNORED

The Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, as amended in 2024, also contains provisions concerning unlawful interception of non-public computer communications and judicially authorised interception of electronic communications. The legislation defines interception broadly enough to include listening to or recording communication data in specified circumstances. But legal precision matters, particularly when criminal liability is being discussed.

It would be premature for commentators to declare, without establishing the facts, that the mere existence or publication of this particular audio automatically constitutes a criminal offence under the Cybercrimes Act. If, however, the evidence establishes that a private electronic communication was intercepted or obtained without lawful authority, the circumstances could raise serious questions under the applicable constitutional, data-protection and cybercrime frameworks. That is precisely why an independent investigation matters: the law should determine the legality, not social media.

PUBLIC INTEREST IS NOT A BLANK CHEQUE

There is another important distinction that the Nigerian public must begin to make. A matter involving a public official may be of public interest without every private conversation involving that official becoming public property. Public interest is not the same thing as public curiosity.

A genuine public-interest disclosure ordinarily requires more than the ability to attract clicks, outrage or political engagement. It requires consideration of authenticity, context, provenance, relevance and the legitimate rights of the people involved. A fragment of an alleged private conversation, detached from the circumstances in which it occurred and presented to millions of people without independent authentication, can easily become something very different from responsible whistleblowing.

It can become narrative engineering, particularly when selected material is used to encourage the public towards a predetermined interpretation. When such narrative engineering is repeatedly used to shape public perception, it begins to resemble propaganda rather than public accountability.

THE MORAL QUESTION

There is also a moral dimension that no statute can completely capture. Politics is already a theatre of suspicion, rivalry and competing narratives. If every private conversation is potentially a future weapon, trust disappears from public life. People stop speaking candidly, officials become afraid of legitimate conversations, and citizens become unwilling to engage public figures.

Political communication then gradually degenerates into a marketplace where the most sensational fragment-not necessarily the most truthful account-commands the greatest attention. This is where the conduct surrounding the dissemination of private conversations raises profound ethical questions.

A society that normalises the conversion of private conversations into political weapons risks producing a culture in which nothing is private, context is disposable and reputation is collateral damage. That is not democratic accountability; it is the erosion of the ethical architecture upon which democratic accountability depends.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE ‘MERCHANT OF PROPAGANDA’ MODEL

There is a growing phenomenon in digital politics in which controversy itself becomes a political commodity. The objective is no longer necessarily to establish facts, but to generate a continuous stream of allegations, recordings, screenshots, insinuations and counter-allegations until the public becomes emotionally exhausted and truth becomes indistinguishable from repetition.

The danger is particularly acute when the communicator becomes both the source of the allegation and the narrator of the evidence. That model creates an obvious credibility problem because the public is effectively being asked to accept not merely the allegation but also the interpretation supplied by the person disseminating it.

That is why independent verification is indispensable. A recording should be authenticated, its provenance established, its full context examined and any editing disclosed. The circumstances of its acquisition should also be investigated. Where there are allegations of unlawful interception or misuse of personal data, the appropriate regulatory and law-enforcement authorities should be allowed to do their work.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION HAS RESPONSIBILITIES

Freedom of expression is indispensable to democracy, but so is the right to privacy. These principles should not be presented as enemies. Responsible journalism, legitimate whistleblowing and public-interest disclosure have their place, but none of them should become convenient labels for every unauthorised exposure of private communications.

The democratic answer to disputed conduct is evidence, investigation and due process-not digital vigilantism. If the recording is authentic and contains evidence of wrongdoing, the proper response is to submit the evidence to the appropriate institutions and allow the facts to be tested. If it is unauthorised, manipulated, selectively edited or misleadingly presented, those facts should also be established through proper investigation. Either way, the truth deserves a process more rigorous than a Facebook post.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN AKPABIO

The most important lesson from this episode should not be about Senator Godswill Akpabio alone; it should be about the Nigeria we are creating. Today, it may be a conversation involving a Senate President. Tomorrow, it could be a judge, journalist, businessman, civil servant, academic, clergy member or ordinary citizen.

If the principle becomes that anyone who possesses a private recording is entitled to publish it whenever politically convenient, then privacy ceases to be a right and becomes merely a temporary privilege enjoyed by those who have not yet been recorded. That is a dangerous trend with implications extending far beyond the personalities involved in the present controversy.

The constitutional guarantee of privacy cannot be selectively defended, data protection cannot become a slogan deployed only when convenient, and cybercrime legislation cannot be invoked selectively. Political communication cannot be allowed to become a free-for-all in which reputations are tried and convicted on social media before evidence is examined.

LET THE LAW SPEAK

There is, therefore, a compelling case for the relevant authorities to establish the facts surrounding any purported private telephone recording now circulating. Who made the recording? How was it obtained? Was consent given? Was the communication intercepted? Was it edited? Who first disseminated it, and for what purpose? What personal data were processed? Was there a lawful basis for that processing? And does the dissemination violate any applicable constitutional, statutory or judicial protection? Those are questions for evidence, not conjecture.

There is, however, a broader principle worth defending: private communication should not become political ammunition merely because it can generate attention. A democracy requires trust, evidence, restraint and respect for the law. Public accountability is strengthened, not weakened, when allegations are subjected to verification and established processes rather than determined by the velocity of social-media circulation.

The real moral deficit in contemporary public discourse is not that people disagree. It is that the boundaries between legitimate scrutiny and intrusion can become dangerously blurred when private material is circulated without adequate attention to authenticity, context, provenance and applicable law. Once society becomes indifferent to those boundaries, everyone-not merely public officials-has reason to be concerned about the future of privacy.

Vice-Presidential Candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, has vowed that his party will restore fuel subsidy ‘in its own way’ if elected, insisting that Nigerians deserve affordable fuel prices.

Kwankwaso, who spoke in an exclusive interview with Arise News on Tuesday, faulted the manner in which President Bola Ahmed Tinubu removed subsidy.

He said the action which Tinubu took in May 2023 plunged the country into economic hardship.

‘Among the three of them, Bola Tinubu decided to remove the subsidy. And the consequences we thought would happen certainly happened. He removed it immediately, without looking at all the possible issues. That is how we found ourselves in this total mess economically,’ Kwankwaso said.

He recalled that during the campaigns, all major contenders had promised to remove subsidy, but Tinubu’s ‘day one’ implementation without safeguards worsened the situation.

He also criticised former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s proposal to privatize refineries, saying it lacked clarity and was more political than practical.

On whether the NDC would bring back subsidy, Kwankwaso was emphatic, ‘We are bringing subsidy in our own way. If individuals in this country can build refineries, I see no reason why government under certain circumstances will not build refineries to achieve the minimum requirement, for people to buy fuel at a reasonable price.’

He explained that the NDC’s plan is to expand refinery capacity, both public and private, to ensure supply meets demand and prices remain affordable.

‘We will do whatever it takes to put the price of oil down,’ he added.

Kwankwaso stressed that the party’s approach would not be a return to the old subsidy regime but a structured intervention that guarantees Nigerians relief at the pump while sustaining economic stability.

The former Kano governor’s remarks come amid widespread debate over the impact of subsidy removal, which has led to soaring fuel prices, inflation, and public discontent.

His pledge signals that subsidy in a redefined form could become a central campaign issue for the NDC as elections draw closer.

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) says it is a ‘national disgrace’ for President Bola Tinubu to be vacationing in France while President Emmanuel Macron is in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Tinubu, who is currently on annual vacation in Europe, had delegated Vice-President Kashim Shettima to attend the global event.

This is the third consecutive time that Shettima would stand in for the president, a development that has triggered reactions, especially from opposition voices.

In a statement, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, National Publicity Secretary of the ADC, said, ‘The irony would be amusing if it were not a national disgrace. At a time when world leaders are advancing their countries’ interests at the United Nations General Assembly, Nigeria’s President is holed up in the French capital while his host has left to pursue his own country’s national interest.

‘President Tinubu cannot be vacationing in Paris while President Macron is in New York representing France and expect Nigerians to accept that it is okay for their President to continue to hang around in a country after the host has left to attend to more important things. This is not merely poor optics. It is a national embarrassment.’

He described the continued absence of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, while Vice-President Kashim Shettima is outside Nigeria, as a ‘dangerous disregard for the Constitution.’

The ADC spokesman said it was particularly troubling that the President and Vice-President were simultaneously absent while Nigerians confronted worsening insecurity, unemployment and an unbearable cost-of-living crisis.

Abdullahi called on the Presidency and the National Assembly to provide a direct answer to one question: ‘Who presently exercises the constitutional powers of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and under what provision of the Constitution?’

He said Section 145 of the Constitution requires the President, when proceeding on vacation for a period of up to 21 days, to transmit a written declaration to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, after which the Vice-President performs the functions of Acting President.

Abdullahi said, ‘President Tinubu left Nigeria on 30 August and has now been away for more than 21 days. We therefore demand to know whether the required declaration was transmitted by the President. If he did not, we would like to know why the National Assembly has ignored Section 145 of the Constitution.’

He also rejected the Presidency’s explanation that the President was on a ‘working vacation’ or that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, would represent President Tinubu at official events, dismissing it as ‘an absurdity that raises more questions than it answers.

‘Representing the President at events and ceremonies does not confer constitutional powers. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation is a mere appointee of the President. He may attend events or deliver speeches on the President’s behalf, but he cannot exercise the constitutional powers of the President or Acting President,’ he said.

‘Representation is not governance. Attendance at official functions is not presidential authority. Nigeria cannot be governed through ceremonial proxies, telephone calls and press statements issued from foreign capitals.’

He added that the claim that the President has continued to direct national affairs from abroad only ‘compounds the absurdity’, saying that a so-called ‘working vacation’ does not remove the President’s constitutional obligations under Section 145.

‘There is no constitutional category known as a ‘working vacation’. Presidential authority cannot be transferred by convenience, protocol or press statement. Nigeria is a constitutional democracy, not a private enterprise to be managed remotely from a holiday destination.’