By Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, Executive Director of Spaces for Change (S4C) West Africa
As the saying goes, “if you want to hide something, put it in a book”. Nothing brings this saying to life more than El-Rufai’s recent confessions about wire-tapping the National Security Adviser’s (NSA’s) phone.
For too long, independent reports have exposed overwhelming evidence of the abuse of spyware technologies in Nigeria by both state and non-state actors, but no serious action has ever been taken over time. In 2021, I led the team of researchers that examined how the huge budgetary allocations for national security plus the massive influx of sophisticated surveillance technologies imported into Nigeria in the name of crime control and countering terrorism are being used.
The report, Security Playbook of Digital Authoritarianism in Nigeria”, exposed how weak regulations and unaccountable practices have facilitated misuse, repurposing and harmful deployment of surveillance technologies to violate privacy, stifle dissent, and restrict civic freedoms under the guise of national security.
During an interview on ARISE TV where the above research findings were discussed, Rufai Oseni asked me why insecurity, especially terrorism, has surged despite heavy security spending on the importation of sophisticated technologies that enhance threat detection and
annihilation. Research evidence answers this question by showing how surveillance technologies are often “diverted to monitor the movement of citizens, track critics on online platforms, spy on activists and opposition politicians, and intercept their private communications, thereby limiting the ability of civic actors to organize, associate and assemble freely.”
In order words, Nigeria’s security challenges have persisted as technologies imported for public safety are diverted towards purposes unrelated to crime control generally. This is further aggravated by the poor accountability culture for spyware use in particular.
Furthermore, Rufai Oseni’s question is quite significant because of the heavy disconnect between heavy security spending and the pervasive insecurity across the country. In the deadliest attack recorded in the South-West region in February 2026, gunmen invaded and razed Woro community and a neighbouring town in Kwara State, massacring about 200 people. In a recent video circulating on social media, the abductors claimed that they have 176 Kwara abductees, including women and children, in their custody.
Incidents like this leave many wondering how criminal gangs abduct and transport large numbers of people without detection? Abductions of this scale occur so frequently in many parts of Nigeria, causing many to wonder whether surveillance technologies are even ever deployed to combat crime at all.
It is instructive to mention that surveillance technologies imported into the country possess highly sophisticated capabilities to pinpoint the exact physical locations of devices, individuals and other targets. For instance, the Israeli Hacking Teams’ Remote-Control Systems, often imported into Nigeria by both security agencies and state governments in the name of security, is the most invasive and ruthless intrusion software that can track the exact position of a user, even when abroad. Similarly, the Circles’ spyware—also of Israeli origin—can be connected locally using in-country telecommunications infrastructure, or its cloud system known as the “Circles Cloud.”
The spyware can remotely infiltrate smartphones to access all data, including microphones and cameras. Just like Rufai Oseni, many stakeholders have also asked whether these security technologies with highly sophisticated surveillance and threat detection capabilities are ever deployed to target and neutralise terrorists’ bases in order to rein in their activities as well as rescue abducted victims from their enclaves?
Another interesting finding from the study is election periods are peak usage times for surveillance technologies.According to the report, “hastily-made budgetary revisions and the procurement of surveillance technologies reach their peak whenever the nation prepares for elections. It is the time fierce and obscenely-expensive electoral contestations between political heavyweights rouse candidates to know what their opponents were saying or planning to do.
Old and new start-ups in surveillance systems around the world latch onto the charged electoral atmosphere to sell spying technologies to willing and ready customers, including heads of federal and state governments in Nigeria gearing up for the national elections.”
El Rufai’s recent outbursts days after Nigeria’s election timetable was unveiled not only corroborated the above research evidence, but also reveals how routinely wire-tapping and the interception of private communications occurs in Nigeria despite the litany of controls in espoused in Nigerian law books. If the mobile phone of Nigeria’s National Security Adviser,
Nuhu Ribadu, can be bugged with relative ease by a private individual, that alone signals that the prevalence of unauthorised interception may be happening at a scale higher than the reported levels.
As far back as 2020, Citizen Lab report, titled “Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyber-espionage Firm Circles, exposed how said a telecom surveillance company has been helping state security apparatuses across 25 countries, including Nigeria, to spy on the communications of opposition figures, journalists, and protesters. Circles, part of NSO Group,claims the company to sells its technology only to vetted governments for the purpose of fighting crime and terrorism. As El Rufai’s phone-bugging disclosure confirms, these technologies do get into private hands, and not only governments. The NSA is not just an ordinary citizen, but rather, represents Nigeria’s premium insignia of national defense and supreme security authority. Access to his phone is neither easy nor made possible by amateur hacking technologies.
So, does El Rufai possess or have access to advanced wire-tapping facilities? When El Rufai was governor, Kaduna State government’s 2017 budget earmarked N2.55 billion Naira to procure mobile call monitoring and communication interception technologies. Eventually, Kaduna State government imported mobile call monitoring and communication interception technologies that use geo-position interceptor and location of Global System for Mobile (GSM)and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) systems. These technologies are capable of eavesdropping on mobile communications that use communications GSM or UTMS technology. It is not known whether El Rufai relinquished access to these technologies when he ceased to be governor. More so, Citizen Lab’s research reveals that clients with access to such technologies can “either purchase a system that they connect to their local telecommunications companies’ infrastructure, or they can use a separate system called the “Circles Cloud,” which interconnects with telecommunications companies around the world.”
The Security Playbook report divulges that state governments are the worst culprits of unlawful surveillance in Nigeria. Too many state governments in Nigeria are using insecurity as an excuse to massively import surveillance technologies, and this is a red flag! It is obvious that this “security excuse” is being unduly exploited by state governments for unethical deployment and repurposing of security technologies to ventures unrelated to security.
In the follow-up report to the Security Playbook report, The Proliferation of Dual-Use Surveillance Technologies in Nigeria: Deployment, Risks & Accountability, SPACES FOR Change advocated for stronger import controls for surveillance technologies, especially those with dual-use purposes. The report demanded the tightening of end-user certification protocols for state governments in particular, as well as the total revamp of legal and institutional frameworks governing the use and importation of dual-use technologies.
Finally, it is not to be taken for granted that Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution guarantees privacy rights under Section 37 while the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 outlines strong data handling obligations. Likewise, the interception of private communications is governed by the Lawful Interception of Communication Regulation (LICR) 2019 which spells out the circumstances law enforcement agents can lawfully intercept private communications. Why aren’t legal protections against unlawful surveillance effective?
There are two main reasons for this. First, Nigerian laws make exception for security. And once coated with the balm of ‘national security’, it confers an automatic, and often unchecked license on state actors to do whatever that is necessary to ensure public safety against harm with much less scrutiny. Citizens also assume that these technologies would be deployed lawfully and for legitimate reasons.
Secondly, Nigerian laws are too liberal, vesting enormous surveillance powers on multiple agencies, ministries and institutions. Likewise, the categories of persons and entities authorized to import dual use technologies, including spyware into the country, is broad, encompassing ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), military and paramilitary organizations, embassies, private corporations and persons. The only exception is arms and ammunition which may only be imported by security agencies. In this liberal legal environment, poorly-regulated access is prone to abuse. And that is why the El Rufai saga invites an introspection and careful re-examination of and effectiveness of national import controls and deployment regimes. Not that we didn’t know before, what El Rufai has done is to accentuate the extent of harmful deployment of spyware going on in Nigeria.
What makes it worse is that nobody is immune from such privacy intrusions, including the NSA! I warned stakeholders at the National Digital Rights Conference held in Abuja on January 26—organized by Avocats San Frontieres, Spaces for Change and CITAD—that Nigeria dissipates too much time and resources majoring on the minor.
Deploying sophisticated surveillance technologies to target critics and censor free speech online should be the least worry of any serious government, especially in a country ravaged by an array of criminal gangs and terrorist groups.
Citizens need to see less proof of the systematic deployment of security technologies to control, surveil, spy and suppress civil society, journalists, and political opponents; but rather, more leveraging of advanced technologies to strengthen national security architecture, gain digital sovereignty and ensure sustainable security for the people of Nigeria
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