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.