Senator Shehu Buba has broken his long silence over persistent claims that tie him to banditry and revealed that the footage now circulating online was secretly captured by a young man he once took in and educated.
The Bauchi South lawmaker, who chairs the Senate Committee on Livestock and Animal Husbandry, disclosed in a statement on Sunday that Hassan Husseini, introduced to him in 2024 as an orphan needing school fees, had recorded visitors to his home while under his guardianship. He said those recordings later resurfaced as supposed proof of meetings with bandit kingpins.
“I later discovered that, while under my care, he had recorded photographs and videos of visitors to my residence. These materials later formed the basis of allegations circulated on social media,” Buba stated.
According to the senator, he enrolled Husseini in a private college and an Islamic school in Kaduna and even gave him a bicycle, only for the young man to abandon his studies and ask for capital to open a car dealership. Buba refused the request and advised him to resume schooling instead, a decision he believes triggered the eventual leak of the footage.
He traced the wider controversy back to September 2024, when a militia group allegedly working for the Bauchi State Agency for Vigilante and Youth Empowerment killed two charcoal traders. Buba, who visited the bereaved families and demanded accountability, claimed his intervention provoked the Bauchi State Commissioner for Internal Security, Abubakar Bununu, to publicly link him to bandit networks.
Matters escalated further, he explained, when Governor Bala Mohammed petitioned President Bola Tinubu and alleged that Buba had funded a bandit kingpin’s trip to Mecca for the 2024 Hajj through an aide. The senator flatly rejected the accusation. He noted that he employed nobody by that name, and challenged security operatives to probe the claim.
Buba confirmed he had already dragged the matter before the courts, having filed a defamation suit at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court and petitioned police, which resulted in five suspects standing trial at the Federal High Court in Abuja over cyberstalking, extortion, and criminal defamation. Proceedings continue on 29 September.
He has since taken the fight beyond Nigeria’s borders. He lodged a criminal complaint against Hassan Saleh Hussein with prosecutors in Niamey, Niger Republic.
Dismissing the newest clips shared by a content creator identified as “D English Alhaji,” Buba explained that investigators found the material spliced together from unrelated recordings, including a 2023 visit by Hajj returnees.
“The claim that these clips constitute evidence of bandits visiting my residence is false,” he said.
He called on journalists and fact-checkers to interrogate such claims independently before publication.
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