The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Ebonyi State has said that no politician can kill any opposition party in Nigeria.

The party also condemned a statement attributed to the Minister of Works and former governor of the state, David Umahi, in which he reportedly said he had “killed PDP” and would “unalive” the party if it attempted to regain political relevance ahead of the 2027 general elections.

It described the alleged remark as disturbing and inappropriate in a democratic environment, insisting that no individual politician, regardless of political position or influence, has the power to determine the existence or political participation of a registered political party.

The PDP Publicity Secretary in Ebonyi State, Prince Darlington Peter Onwe, stated this in a statement issued on Saturday in Abakaliki, against the backdrop of the emerging political activities ahead of the 2027 governorship election in the state.

Onwe said the alleged comment was particularly concerning because it was reportedly made in response to a question on whether Umahi supported the PDP governorship candidate, Ifeanyi Chukwuma Odii.

According to him, a political disagreement over a candidate or party should ordinarily be addressed through political arguments, policy differences and competing programmes rather than language capable of being interpreted as threats.

He said, “The PDP is a political organisation, not an individual. It cannot be killed or unalive by any politician.

“Our party belongs to millions of Nigerians who believe in democracy, constitutional governance and the right of citizens to organise and contest elections.

“If Senator Umahi disagrees with the PDP or does not support our candidate, he is entitled to his political position. But disagreement must not be expressed in language that can reasonably be interpreted as a threat against the existence of a political party or the people associated with it.”

The opposition party consequently called on the minister to clarify what he meant by the phrase, “we will unalive it”, arguing that Nigerians deserved political competition based on ideas, records and programmes.

The PDP further said political parties were institutions that could outlive individual politicians, adding that its political history demonstrated that politicians could change platforms without determining the survival of the organisations they left.

The party also urged political leaders in Ebonyi to exercise restraint in their public statements, particularly as political activities intensify ahead of the 2027 elections.

It recalled that previous election cycles in the state had been characterised by allegations of political intimidation and confrontation, stressing that such experiences made responsible political communication essential.

The statement said, “Democracy requires that political parties and candidates be allowed to campaign, organise and seek the votes of citizens without fear.”

The PDP maintained that Odii and other members of the party had the constitutional right to participate in the 2027 electoral process, insisting that no politician could determine whether citizens exercised their political rights.

The party said it would continue to pursue its political objectives through peaceful and constitutional means, while calling on its members and supporters to remain calm and law-abiding.

It also urged security agencies and relevant institutions to pay attention to public statements that could heighten political tension ahead of the 2027 general elections.

“Elections are decided by the people, not by declarations that one politician has killed or will kill a political party. The ballot belongs to the people of Ebonyi State,” the party said.

The PDP challenged Umahi and other political actors in the state to engage the electorate on policies, development programmes and their respective records in governance rather than rhetoric that, in the party’s view, could deepen political apprehension.

The party’s position comes amid heightened political mobilisation in Ebonyi ahead of the 2027 governorship election, with the PDP expected to intensify its grassroots organisation and campaign activities.

By Ken Harries, Esq.

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.

• Ken Harries, Esq., is an Abuja-based Development Communication Strategist.