JamzNG Latest News, Gist, Entertainment in Nigeria
Many people claim that government officials in Nigeria brandish metal shields to protect themselves from justice after willfully breaking the law. Proponents of this thought process insist that there is always an escape route for government officials after committing illegal acts.
He officially upholds the oft-quoted mantra “above the law.” While laws enacted by the government protect government officials and their friends, the same laws expose and implicate ordinary citizens. The scenario aptly captures Nigeria’s contradictory social and political spaces, which is reminiscent of the irreducible Orwellian class maxim “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others”.
If a lady dies in the house of a common citizen and her body is found naked with blood stains around her mouth and nose, that citizen will have a hard time with the law. The common citizen will be detained and released on bail only after preliminary investigations, depending on social status. Death is a serious matter.
In other climes, a government official will voluntarily resign from office prior to police investigations. But in Nigeria, a government official will show off and use the government apparatus of force to intimidate anyone connected to the case.
The exercise of unbridled political power and gender abuses are never far from Nigeria’s political corridors. Many women have fallen victim to this brutal exercise of power. While some women die in the process, others remain maimed and psychologically impaired for the rest of their lives. Silence, no one speaks and the man in power goes away unpunished.
Political power and gender violence have once again thrown Nigeria’s political elite into a familiar but unpleasant spotlight. Recently, Nigeria’s Minister of Works and former governor of Ebonyi State, Senator David Umahi, found himself at the center of consecutive and extremely worrying scandals linking his public office to allegations of sexual misconduct.
The first was Abuja businesswoman Tracynither Ohiri’s sensitive public allegation of an unpaid $200 million campaign debt and alleged sexual advances. This was quickly followed by the tragic and mysterious death of 26-year-old medical professional Mary Habila at Umahi country house in Uburu, Ebonyi State.
The boundaries of reason collapse when an otherwise respected government official is simultaneously embroiled in sex scandals. Call it coincidence or chance, it still defies the edges of reasonable cognition.
The chaos began when Tracynither Ohiri took to social media, alleging that the minister had withheld hundreds of millions of naira from her for promotional materials provided during her 2014 gubernatorial campaign.
According to Ohiri, as reported by various media outlets, the minister’s refusal to pay was because she refused to submit to his predatory sexual advances, creating an intimidating scenario where business capital was withheld due to carnal demands. The reaction to his public protest followed a predictably oppressive script. Instead of conducting an independent investigation into the financial violation or sexual harassment claims, the state turned its machinery against the victim.
Ohiri was quickly arrested by the police, flown from Lagos to Abuja and arraigned before a court in Wuse on defamation charges. Human rights activists, including Omoyele Sowore, have vociferously criticized this state-backed bullying, highlighting how the police have been weaponized to turn a commercial and ethical dispute into criminal persecution. This highlights a disturbing pattern in Nigeria’s corridors of power: the blatant use of the state apparatus as a weapon to silence accusers and protect the powerful from transparent scrutiny. It will continue to disturb Nigeria’s collective moral canvas: the state’s use of force is effectively used to suppress the reactionary voices of victims.
The script followed a familiar Nigerian pattern. Ohiri later issued a highly publicized apology and recanted his specific claims, with reports alleging an out-of-court settlement. The incident added to our repository of obscenity maintained by existing political power structures. In a country where the legal system routinely grinds ordinary citizens to dust, the lightning-quick deployment of courts and police to protect a minister’s reputation seems less like justice and more like forced submission. The argument that the public must remain silent because Umahi is a government official collapses the boundaries of reason while ushering in the frontiers of stirred consciences.
While the dust was still settling on the Ohiri affair, a bigger scandal emerged from Umahi’s palatial country home in Ebonyi State. According to reports, on June 26, 2026, Mary Habila, a community health worker assigned to the minister’s medical team, was found dead inside her apartment complex. Compounding the tragedy, a second woman traveling with her, Mary Baaki, reportedly disappeared from public view, leaving behind an eerie silence.
Strangely, news of a suspicious death in the home of a sitting minister was kept under wraps for over two weeks until independent investigative journalism uncovered it. Umahi’s response was defensive, threatening legal fire against anyone who accused him of wrongdoing, dismissing the uproar as politicization and insisting that the deceased was “like a daughter” to him. Reports indicate that Mary Habila was a Community Health Extension Worker (CHEW) at the David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences (DUFUHS), not a physiotherapist as claimed by Umahi’s media team.
Furthermore, the Nigerian Society of Physiotherapy (NSP) carried out an exhaustive database check and formally announced that Mary Habila has never been registered or licensed as a physiotherapist in Nigeria. So what was a community health worker doing in a minister’s house? Once again, another question that collapses the boundaries of reason.
While it is legally and ethically essential to avoid premature conclusions and declarations of guilt, the institutional handling of Mary Habila’s death is deeply troubling. Activists from groups such as the Nigerian Women International Alliance (NWIA) have rightly called for a fully transparent and independent investigation. In any functioning democracy, an unexplained death within the private quarters of a public official would result in an immediate and neutral forensic seal and exhaustive questioning. Instead, the audience watches a powerful official dominate the narrative through press conferences while the victim’s grieving family faces intense pressure.
Even more disturbing, some otherwise enlightened people sided with the minister, publicly clearing him of any wrongdoing. While the public is advised to avoid culpable conclusions against the minister, people must also distance themselves from condescending comments that vindicate the minister. It certainly collapses the boundaries of reason to exonerate an elite minister after the death of a young woman in his home while the lady’s family is in despair. Those who want to attract kudos from Umahi should do so through other means and not by shamelessly publicly desecrating the spirit of the late Mary Habila.
These sex-related controversies involving David Umahi are not isolated incidents, but are symptomatic of a broader culture of impunity rooted in the Nigerian ruling class. When women in business or public service enter spaces occupied by powerful men, they are too often viewed through the lens of entitlement and subjugation. If they speak out, the very institutions taxpayer-funded to protect them – the police and judiciary – are often subverted to intimidate and silence them.
Furthermore, the Minister’s dismissive rhetoric during these crises highlights a disturbing elitism. Dismissing public concern over a citizen’s death or a businesswoman’s grievance as mere social media disasters or political attacks demonstrates a grave lack of responsibility. Public officials hold their positions as a sacred mandate, meaning that their private conduct and events that occur within their holdings are subject to public scrutiny.
The Bola Tinubu administration must respond by ensuring that David Umahi faces the law until he is proven innocent. Although some people have argued that anyone can escape the blue kill as long as the person identifies himself or works for Tinubu, the president has a responsibility to Nigerians to uphold the constitution.
Mary Habila’s father and family must allow the law to take its full course. The father is in bad faith when he quickly obtains an affidavit and demands that the body of his dead daughter be handed over to him for burial. Nigeria cannot continue to treat allegations of suspicious deaths as passing trends on social media that legal threats or backroom deals can bury. The administration of President Bola Tinubu must recognize that the conduct of its government officials directly reflects the moral integrity of the state. True justice requires a departure from the standard pattern of institutional cover-ups. An uncompromising and independent judicial investigation into the circumstances of Mary Habila’s tragic end is needed, completely free from the influence of the Ministry of Works or political networks.
Until Nigeria’s legal system and police demonstrate that an elite government official can be investigated with the same rigor as an ordinary citizen, public trust in governance will continue to erode. True strength lies not in a politician’s ability to resist scandal through intimidation, but in his or her willingness to stand before the law, transparently and unprotected, to let the unvarnished truth speak for itself. Nigerians must secure the boundaries of reason instead of collapsing it through behaviors and arguments that destabilize our collective ethics.
Post views:
158
