I approach national security and intelligence operations with deliberate caution. Revealing successes too early can compromise ongoing missions; failures narrated without context can sound like conspiracy theories. Allegations against individuals working at the sensitive intersection of intelligence, non-kinetic security strategy, and politics can inflict irreversible reputational damageeven when entirely fabricated.

That caution explains my initial reluctance to write on the recent viral video purporting to show high-profile bandit kingpins on a visit to the residence of Senator Shehu Umar Buba of Bauchi South. But the scale of the circulation, and the pattern behind it, now demand public clarification.

I have known Senator Buba for about two years, during investigations into non-kinetic approaches to counter insurgency in Northern Nigeria. In that period, senior security and intelligence officials including the Office of the National Security Adviser under Malam Nuhu Ribadu provided information that did not support any of the banditry allegations repeatedly circulated against him. This does not certify perfection; it simply reflects what the evidence showed.

The campaign against him is not new. The allegations took formal shape in September 2024, when Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, once an ally of Senator Buba, petitioned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The petition claimed that the senator, through an aide named Yahaya Ibrahim, sponsored a bandit kingpin to the 2024 Hajj and distributed motorcycles to bandits. Senator Buba denied the claims, insisted he had no aide by that name, and explained that his Hajj sponsorships like his scholarships, medical outreach and other empowerment initiatives are based on recommendations from community and religious leaders, and that he does not personally screen or identify the beneficiaries. No investigation has contradicted his explanation.

After the petition failed to gain traction, the same narratives resurfaced through social media influencers with far lower evidentiary thresholds. Since mid 2025, photographs and videos alleging Bubas support for bandits have surfaced periodically. In professional verification chats with mainstream media organisations and senior editors who had received similar allegations and multimedia including a respected Abuja bureau chief who is also a media scholar with strong investigative credentials, the publisher of Zagazola, and a US‑based northern Nigerian journalist‑activist all examined the materials and declined to publish them because they found no substantiation. Their restraint was professional judgment, not fear.

Nevertheless, Senator Buba petitioned security agencies to investigate the disinformation network. Several suspects including a lawyer and three influencers were arrested, while a fifth suspect, Hassan, fled the country.

On October 30, 2025, the suspects were arraigned before Justice Rita Ofili Ajumogobia on charges of criminal conspiracy, cyberstalking, defamation, advance fee fraud, and extortion. The prosecution alleges they broadcast false videos accusing Senator Buba the then Chairman of the Senate Committee on National Security and Intelligence of sponsoring banditry and causing a breakdown of law and order. The extortion charge suggests the campaign may have been more commercial than political at that time.

In July 2026, a fresh petition emergedthis time against Muhammad Abdullahi Abubakar, SAN, former Bauchi governor and APC gubernatorial candidate for defaming Senator Buba. Filed by Jay Adl Attorneys, it alleged cyberstalking, criminal defamation, incitement, and disturbance of public peace, following viral statements in which Abubakar questioned the senators wealth and insinuated blood money. The political context is clear: Senator Buba defected from the APC to the PRP and is now the PRPs gubernatorial candidate. The disinformation campaign, the rivalry, and the legal proceedings are intertwined.

Meanwhile, the latest episode came in August 2026 when a content creator known as D English Alhaji circulated a video claiming to show bandit kingpins at a senators residence. PRNigerias fact check established that the video was a splice of two unrelated clips: Kaduna based Hajj returnees visiting Senator Buba in 2023, speaking Fulfulde/Fulani, and a separate group of individuals displaying passports and speaking English. Neither clip involved bandits. The content creator later interviewed Hassan the fugitive suspect who supplied the footage. The interview went viral with some funny allegations.

By the way, how can anyone seriously believe a narrative by the same Hassan in the interview claiming that bandits were brought to Abuja of all places to be trained by security agencies? How does such an implausible story even survive a moment of scrutiny?

This pattern reveals the architecture of modern disinformation: an old fabrication, rejected by responsible media, is retrieved, re edited, and repackaged for amplification by social media operators who understand that novelty can make old lies feel new. Algorithms reward outrage, giving reckless content creators a competitive advantage over those who exercise restraint. This is not accidental; it is structural.

I am cautious about character testimony, but after two years of engagement with Senator Buba in contexts where performance matters more than presentation, some observations are relevant. He is a man of few words, not given to the theatrics of Nigerian politics. His work in non kinetic securitypersuasion, community engagement, de-radicalisationhas, by credible accounts, helped reduce abductions along the Abuja Kaduna expressway and in Birnin Gwari, among others. Such work cannot be publicised without compromising community leaders or inviting sabotage from actors who profit from instability.

His philanthropic record is independently documented. A Trust TV documentary captured the breadth of his medical outreach across Bauchi and Plateau, showing Muslims and Christians among the beneficiaries. Monthly medical support programmes of that scale leave traces in communities and hospitals; they are not easy to fabricate.

None of this places Senator Buba beyond scrutiny. Public officials must be examined. But the evidence consistently shows that the allegations against him sponsoring banditry, hosting bandit kingpins are manufactured, and the machinery producing them is driven by electoral competition rather than civic concern.

When recycled footage, political rivalry, and social media algorithms converge, even a debunked falsehood can acquire a second life. In such an environment, a public figures communication strategy becomes as important as the truth itself.

Yushau A. Shuaib, the author of An Encounter with the Spymaster and MNI versus MNIPR in NIPSS , yashuaib@yashuaib.com

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Doha Paperless Conference on Climate Change

The United Nations Climate Change conference, which held between November and December 2012 in Doha, Qatar was a spectacular event even when terminologists, on such occasion buzzed the sessions with expected technical jargon of ‘average emission per capita tonnes’ Kyoto Protocol, “hot air” ‘unused carbon credits’, and ‘Kyoto and non-Kyoto countries ‘among other scary terms.

The conference tagged COP18/CMP8 adopted a paperless system, which provided key information about the event in a sustainable way as officials, participants and even the residents used their computers, smart phones and other digital gadgets to track events and get access to designated venues.  Dedicated websites and selected social media platforms provided all the details that anyone could require without the need for circulation of paper materials like books, journals and magazines at the conference.

The paperless conference saved hundred trees along with the associated chemicals and waste of printing literature. Every and anything that could be printed on papers like schedules of events, timetable, maps, proceedings, handouts, notebooks, press releases, product brochures, addendum and business cards were easily accessible on any internet enabled device. On the alternative, compact discs (CDs) and flash-drives were also used to download and save documents for offline access.

With the latest technology, key information were accessible with the use of two-dimensional “Quick Response” (QR) barcodes that could be scanned by smart phones to gain access to relevant documents, maps and websites in a quick, simple and paper-free way. At the Qatar Sustainability Expo, which ran alongside the conference, exhibitors were encouraged to display QR codes that link to PDF documents instead of handing out literature.

The United Nations Climate Change conference is an annual multilateral meeting of governments held in cities across the globe and serves as a forum for countries to discuss climate change issues. The conferences addressed the threat of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide.  The summit was held at the end of a year full of extreme disastrous events caused by super storm Sandy in the USA, typhoon in Philippines and devastating flooding in Nigeria where many lives were lost, properties worth billions of dollars destroyed and millions of citizens driven to internally displaced persons camps globally.

Scientists have claimed that between 2000–2011 carbon dioxide growth in the atmosphere was 20 percent of the total concentration growth since prehistoric level. The concentration of carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere has reached alarming level in 2012 versus the pre-industrial concentration, which was by far lesser and unsustainable going by the consensus of world climate scientists. It is widely acknowledged that scientific evidence currently points to a warming world that would adversely affect human health and agriculture.

Global climate change regime evolved out of the Earth Summit of 1992, which gave birth to three conventions including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since then, 195 countries have become parties to the Convention that was ratified in 1994. Parties to the Convention have met several times since its creation. Conferences and talks were held in Kyoto, Japan and Bali, Indonesia in 2007; Montreal, Canada 2005; Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009; Cancun, Mexico 2010 and Durban, South Africa 2011. More climate change talks were held in Bangkok, Thailand and Bonn, Germany before Doha, Qatar 2012.

Marking the first time that UN climate change negotiations took place in the Middle East, the conference drew approximately 9,000 participants, including 4,356 government officials, 3,956 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organisations, civil society organisations, and 683 members of the media.

Wordings adopted by the conference incorporated for the first time, the concept of “loss and damage”, an agreement in principle that richer nations could be financially responsible to other nations for their failure to reduce carbon emissions.  The concept also requires institutional mechanism to address loss and damage in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

The developed countries have always been urged to compensate poorer nations affected by loss and damage due to climate change. According to the Copenhagen Accord agreed to in 2009, developed countries are to start raising US$100 billion per year starting 2020 to help poorer nations curb their own emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change. Developed countries are supposed to reach the US$100 billion target by gradually increasing on the US$30 billion supposedly raised each year from 2010-2012.

Yushau Shuaib at the Paperless Global Conference on Climate Change in Doha Qatar

One of the lessons learnt at the conference is that the Qatari government, the host of the programme, has succeeded in sending a message that for emission control, environmental sustainability must be encouraged in various ways. Registered participants not only watch the video or read the text of proceedings and presentation through their electronic gadgets; they also participated in the robust debates on climate change through social media. While the paperless summit cut down on the use of papers to save trees and budget cost, the Doha Global Conference on Climate Change was not only paper-free, fun-full but quite an exciting moment in savouring the tranquility of the oil- rich and beautiful Arab city.

Though the power of technologies was harnessed and utilized for real green purposes, the attempt to have an entirely paperless conference was partially defeated because tissue papers in the toilets could not go paperless or wireless. Most of the gadgets must also be recharged electronically to prolong the lifespan of the batteries to really fit into the online environment.

This article by Yushau A Shuaib, has been published in February 2013 by the Economic Confidential, Peoples Daily, Punch, Tribune, Blueprint, Leadership, Daily Trust, Vanguard, Champion and National Mirror

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