The President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has petitioned the Department of State Services, DSS, over a purported anti-North statement attributed to him and widely circulated on Facebook and other digital platforms.
In the petition dated Wednesday, September 9, 2026 and signed by his Chief of Staff, Chinedu Akubueze, Akpabio urged the DSS to urgently investigate the “creation and coordinated dissemination” of what he described as a “manifestly false, inflammatory and dangerously divisive statement.”
The offending graphic, according to the petition, bears the photograph and designation of the Senate President and attributed to him the words: “Northerners, You Will Be The Ones To Suffer The Most, If You Allow Tinubu To Lose The Election.”
Akpabio’s office stated that the Senate President “did not make this statement,” adding that no date, venue, speech, interview, video, audio recording, official statement or credible news report has been produced to authenticate it.
“The graphic carries no identifiable publisher’s mark or verifiable source. It appears to have been deliberately manufactured and presented as an authentic quotation for the purpose of deceiving the public, provoking regional resentment against the President of the Senate and portraying him as threatening the people of Northern Nigeria,” the petition stated.
The petition identified three persons as among the earliest traceable amplifiers of the fabricated graphic based on “preliminary examination of publicly accessible Facebook records.”
It listed Abdullai Musa, who posted the graphic in the Facebook group of ‘Sheik Muhammad bin Uthman group 24’; Uzoma Chilaka, whose Facebook post reproduced the graphic with commentary credited to Boniface Uzoma Chilaka; and Engineer Ibrahim Umar Ammar, a verified Facebook account that also reproduced the graphic with similar commentary.
“These persons should not be presumed guilty before investigation. Nevertheless, their early and substantial roles in circulating the material makes them material persons of interest,” the petition noted.
Akpabio asked the DSS to investigate their publication records, devices, communications and the provenance of the image “to identify the graphics designer, original uploader, sponsors, intermediaries and the network through which it was distributed, in accordance with the laws.”
The Senate President said the petition was filed to protect national cohesion and to check the weaponization of fake news and ethnic narratives ahead of 2027 general elections.
