Opinion | El-Rufai vs Ribadu: Facts Behind the Phone-Tapping Claims

2027 Election Watch, Investigations, National Security, Opinion

El-Rufai vs Ribadu: Facts Behind the Phone-Tapping Claims

A fact-checked rejoinder to Fani-Kayode: what El-Rufai claimed about Ribadu, thallium sulphate and phone-tapping—plus the legal and security realities.

Atlantic Post

February 17, 2026

7–10 minutes

Cybercrimes Act, DSS, EFCC, el-Rufai, featured, Kaduna politics, Nigeria national security, Nuhu Ribadu, Political Opinions, thallium sulphate

By Mark Olise

What Fani-Kayode gets wrong

Femi Fani-Kayode’s polemic, “Nasir El Rufai as a Threat to National Security”, reads less like national-security commentary and more like a political indictment—delivered without the discipline that true security analysis demands: tested facts, defined standards of proof, and restraint where evidence is incomplete.

The centrepiece of his argument is simple: admit (or even imply) illegal interception of a sitting National Security Adviser’s communications and you become a security risk. That proposition is not outrageous; it is, in fact, now being tested in court. The problem is that Fani-Kayode does not stop there. He piles allegation upon allegation—many of them either unproven, disputed, or factually misstated—then treats the pile itself as proof.

Nigeria can’t defend its sovereignty or stabilise its internal security environment through trial-by-column or factional storytelling. It can only do so through institutions: investigations that follow evidence, prosecutions that meet legal thresholds, and political speech that does not recklessly inflame ethnic, sectarian, or class resentments.

What El-Rufai actually alleged and where it now stands

The public record—across multiple outlets and official processes—shows a narrower, more specific set of triggers than Fani-Kayode’s sweeping essay suggests.

First, Nasir El-Rufai said, during a televised interview, that he listened to an intercepted phone call involving Nuhu Ribadu. In the reporting, El-Rufai’s wording is critical: he did not publicly say he personally tapped the phone; he said someone else did, and that he benefited from it.

“Someone tapped his phone.”

“He made the call because we listened to their calls… the government thinks they are the only ones… but we also have our ways.”

Second, following those remarks Department of State Services filed a three-count charge at the Federal High Court, citing cybercrime and communications-law provisions (as reproduced in reporting, including the charge text).

Third, alongside the interception controversy, the same political actor is now entangled in multiple institutional processes in Abuja.

a passport-seizure dispute (with DSS publicly disputing the “arrest attempt” account and saying it acted on a request linked to an anti-graft invitation)
an anti-corruption interrogation and reported detention by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission tied to allegations originating from the Kaduna legislature’s earlier report.

This matters because Fani-Kayode’s “grand conspiracy” framing—an alleged coordinated plan by the NSA and Uba Sani to “destroy” El-Rufai—sits awkwardly against the observable reality: multiple institutions are acting in the open, in writing, and (now) through court filings, albeit amid fierce political contestation.

Phone interception, privacy, and national security

If Fani-Kayode had limited himself to the constitutional and statutory gravity of unlawful interception, he would have had a stronger case. The law is not sentimental about wiretapping.

Nigeria’s Constitution guarantees privacy in terms that explicitly include telephone communications:

“The privacy of citizens… correspondence, telephone conversations… is hereby guaranteed and protected.”

Nigeria’s cybercrime framework also criminalises unauthorised interception. In the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act, “unlawful interceptions” are framed as intentional, unauthorised interception of non-public transmissions of computer data or traffic data, with criminal penalties.

Equally important is that the same law provides a lawful pathway for interception. Often, this fact is ignored in heated political talk. A judge may order a service provider to assist competent authorities. They can intercept or record specified communications where there are reasonable grounds and information on oath.

Fani-Kayode’s essay muddies this framework by implying a binary: either the state is lawless, or the opposition is justified in lawlessness by “retaliation”. That is not patriotic governance; it is a recipe for institutional collapse.

The legal seriousness of El-Rufai’s televised account is now reflected in the charges as reported. These charges include reliance on the Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act 2024. They also involve a communications-law provision related to “public safety” and “national security”.

A patriotic standard is simple: if you believe the state is unlawfully intercepting you, you challenge it in court and through lawful oversight. You do not legitimise unlawful counter-surveillance as political sport. The next beneficiary will not be a reformist. It will be a kidnap network, an insurgent cell, or a foreign intelligence service exploiting a weakened interception ecosystem.

The “chemical weapons” storyline and the thallium sulphate facts

Fani-Kayode’s most inflammatory escalation is his reproduction of a claim. He amplifies that the NSA’s office imported “chemical weapons”. Specifically, he mentions “thalium sulphate”, supposedly for sinister purposes. The verified public record, so far, does not support this leap.

What happened is more precise:

El-Rufai wrote a letter seeking clarification about an alleged procurement of “approximately 10 kilogrammes of thallium sulphate… reportedly from a supplier in Poland”, saying such information was being circulated within opposition leadership circles.
The Office of the National Security Adviser responded denying that it procured or initiated any procurement process for thallium sulphate, and stated that the allegation had been referred to DSS/SSS for investigation.

“ONSA has neither procured nor initiated any process for the purchase of such material.”

That denial is a material fact Fani-Kayode’s essay treats as an inconvenience rather than a central evidentiary pivot.

Now, on the substance: thallium(I) sulphate (thallous sulphate) is indeed a highly toxic compound. Authoritative chemical and safety references describe extreme toxicity and historical use as a rat poison.

“Extremely toxic by ingestion… used as a rat poison.”

Medical and epidemiological literature also documents characteristic features of thallium poisoning, including hair loss and painful neuropathy.

“Among the distinctive effects… are hair loss and… peripheral neuropathy.”

But none of that makes it a “biological weapon”—a category error. Nor does toxicity alone prove that a government office “imported chemical weapons”. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention regime, scheduled chemicals are listed for declaration/verification purposes, and thallium sulphate is not among the commonly referenced scheduled toxic chemicals in Schedule 3 lists published by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The reasonable point here is not to minimise toxicity. It is to insist on evidentiary sobriety. A toxic chemical can be legitimately imported for tightly regulated industrial, laboratory, or security-related purposes. Alternatively, it can be trafficked illegally for harm. The differentiator is evidence: permits, chain-of-custody, importer identity, end-user controls, and regulatory oversight. That is precisely why ONSA’s referral to DSS for investigation matters.

Kaduna’s bloodletting and Zaria’s tragedy

Fani-Kayode’s essay weaponises mass death in two theatres—Southern Kaduna and Zaria. It turns contested casualty figures into political cudgels. Then it assigns intent as though it were self-evident.

Southern Kaduna first. Credible reporting shows that, even at the time, stakeholders provided sharply divergent figures. An ICIR report quotes the National Emergency Management Agency as stating 204 deaths covering October–December 2016 and early January 2017 for two LGAs. It also notes that Catholic Church sources claimed 808 deaths by late December 2016. The Inspector General of Police disputed that figure.

A contemporaneous ICIR investigation documents specific attacks around 24–25 December 2016. The incidents included reports of six killed in one attack in Goska. This underscores that violence was real, recurring, and complex. It was not a single-day statistic that can be casually inflated into “800 in one day”.

Zaria next. Here, the record is even clearer because a Kaduna State judicial commission produced quantified findings. The commission report states that 349 persons lost their lives in the clashes, and references the burial of 347 corpses in a mass grave. Such findings were also reported internationally.

Human-rights reporting complements this with detail about the mass burial and wider accountability concerns. Amnesty International reported evidence of 347 bodies buried in a mass grave, characterising it as part of an “unlawful killings and mass cover-up” narrative.

Here is the crucial rejoinder point: the horror of these events is not improved by exaggeration. It is worsened because exaggeration corrodes credibility. It invites partisan rebuttal. Ultimately, this denial deprives victims of the one thing they require from a functioning state: truth that can survive scrutiny.

A patriotic mindset insists on precision with tragedy. If you claim “1,000 killed in one day” where an official inquiry found 349 deaths across the incident period, you hand every bad actor a reason to dismiss the entire justice conversation as propaganda.

A patriotic test for all sides

Nigeria’s security crisis—banditry, terrorism, communal violence, organised crime—does not need additional accelerants from elite quarrels. It needs institutions that can withstand elite quarrels.

A patriotic, country-first reading of the current saga yields five principles.

First, unlawful interception is not a joke. If the claims reported from El-Rufai’s interview are accurate, then the state is right to investigate and prosecute. That is not persecution; it is constitutional statecraft.

Second, serious allegations about toxic chemicals must be handled like serious allegations: documentary evidence, controlled disclosure, competent investigation. ONSA’s formal denial and referral to DSS is the correct procedural direction; the public should now demand outcomes, not theatrics.

Third, public trust is a national-security asset. When political elites claim (on air) that “the government listens… without a court order”, it is not enough to jeer or cheer. This situation prompts the strengthening of lawful interception safeguards. We also need to improve judicial oversight and parliamentary scrutiny. The same weakness that permits abusive state surveillance also allows criminal surveillance of the state.

Fourth, victims are not props. Southern Kaduna and Zaria demand accountability, reconciliation, and (where evidence supports it) prosecutions—not rhetorical inflation and sectarian scoring.

Finally, Nigeria must reject the politics of pedigree. Fani-Kayode’s class-coded contrast between “ruling class” lineage and “railway compound” origins is not patriotic. It threatens national cohesion in a country whose stability depends on merit, inclusion, and equal citizenship under law. A nation confronting insecurity cannot afford elite commentary that normalises social contempt.

The republic’s proper answer to this episode is not a columnist’s verdict. It is the court’s verdict—delivered on evidence, under law, with the nation watching and learning what standards still bind the powerful.

Mark Olise is the Publisher/CEO of Atlantic Post.