By Khaleed Yazeed
A young woman is dead. Her name was Mary Habila. She was 26 years old. A physiotherapist from Kaduna State. A daughter. A life with promise, now extinguished under circumstances that demand answers. And the man in whose home she died, David Umahi, Nigeria’s Minister of Works, has responded with legal threats, deflections, and the same arrogant bluster that has defined his political career.
We cannot ignore the pattern. We cannot pretend this is an isolated incident. This is a minister who has been accused of sexual harassment by a businesswoman who claimed he entered her hotel room inappropriately dressed in a towel and made unwanted advances . This is a minister who owes N7 million to a former classmate who did a job for him at his hotel in Abakaliki and has refused to pay, with the classmate calling him “a bad person” who treated him badly despite their secondary school connection. This is a minister who, when asked a simple question about the cost of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway on national television, exploded with contempt, telling the journalist “You are too small for me to report you to the President” and declaring himself a “professor in this field” despite lacking any academic credentials to support that claim. This is a man who told the journalist to “keep quiet” and insisted he was “too small” to be taken seriously.
David Umahi is a man who changes his political loyalty like a chameleon changes color. He praised Muhammadu Buhari as the best president Nigeria ever had, describing him as “father of modern Nigeria” and praying for “another president like Buhari” to lead the nation. Today, he tells Nigerians that President Tinubu “inherited an economy on life support,” conveniently forgetting that he spent years praising the architect of that crisis. He praised PDP while in power, only to call it “corrupt” after he defected to APC. His loyalty is to power, not to principle. His integrity is transactional, not transformative.
When a businesswoman, Mrs. Tracyniter Nicholas Ohiri, accused him of sexual harassment, unlawful detention, and refusal to pay N25.4 million for campaign materials she supplied, Umahi did not deny the allegations, he used the police to arrest her, had her flown from Lagos to Abuja, and arraigned her on defamation charges while the minister came to the police station to intimidate her. Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore confronted him at the police command, and Umahi’s aides physically shoved the activist aside, with Umahi promising that the woman “has not seen anything yet.” A man with nothing to hide does not weaponize the police against his accusers. A man with no secrets does not intimidate those who speak the truth. The businesswoman later alleged that she was coerced into retracting her claims and promised $70,000 which was never paid, describing the retraction as a “scripted” video .
This is the same minister who, in a viral video, boasted about illegally acquiring a woman’s land because she became “troublesome” and challenged him. “Before, I didn’t want to take the woman’s remaining land, but when she started making trouble, I said they should go and acquire the land. Na me do am (I did it),” Umahi bragged. Diaspora investors have accused him of using military personnel to demolish their multimillion-naira real estate project worth millions of dollars without court orders, destroying properties owned by Nigerians abroad who had invested in their country. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria accused him of illegal land grabbing, diverting a federal highway alignment by nearly seven kilometers to encroach on private property, and deploying military force against civilians. The minister of works, entrusted with building the nation, is instead demolishing the dreams of Nigerian investors.
David Umahi is a minister who cannot answer simple questions. When asked about the cost of the Coastal Highway project, he bullied the journalist, belittled him, and told him he “doesn’t understand anything.” This is not the behaviour of a public servant. This is the behaviour of a man who believes citizens have no right to question the powerful. This is the arrogance of a political class that sees governance as a personal fiefdom. This is the contempt of an elite that has forgotten that public office is a trust, not a throne.
Umahi is a “professor” who cannot speak proper English without committing elementary howlers. A “professor” who claims the National Universities Commission clarified that one can become a professor “by reason of practice”, a claim so absurd it would make a real professor weep . A “professor” who confuses practical experience with academic scholarship, who thinks building flyovers qualifies him to lecture at a university. This is a man who calls himself “King David” and names a university after himself, funded with public money, of course, while children in Ebonyi go to bed hungry. This is a man whose ego is so inflated that he cannot accept that a mere journalist has the right to question him. “You are too small,” he said to Rufai Oseni. Too small. Not in stature, but in status. Because in Umahi’s world, only “big men” matter. And Rufai Oseni, a journalist with the weight of 200 million Nigerians behind his questions, was deemed too small for the great “King David”.
And what of his legacy as governor? A ₦63 billion airport that no one uses, where a church once held services in the terminal . A university named after himself that is an eyesore and a monument to narcissism. Flyovers to nowhere, built with borrowed money, while the people of Ebonyi remain among the poorest in Nigeria. An airport runway that had to be reconstructed by his successor because the “professor of engineering” built it with the wrong materials. A legacy of debt, of waste, of vanity projects that served only to inflate the ego of one man.
The Umuchima community in his own hometown has accused him of forceful eviction of kinsmen from their ancestral homes and the seizure of about 300 hectares of community land. They have alleged that his actions led to deaths among residents, widows who slumped and died after witnessing the demolition of their homes, elderly men who became blind and bedridden after his agents desecrated their ancestral graves. This is the man who claims to be a “father” to his people. This is the man who boasts of bringing “psychological peace” to Ebonyi State. The people of Umuchima would beg to differ.
Now, a young woman is dead in his home. Mary Habila was found dead at Umahi’s residence in Uburu, Ebonyi State. Reports indicate she was found naked with visible physical trauma on her face. The minister says the family broke down her door, doctors tried to revive her, and the matter was reported to the police. But explanations are not answers. And silence is not justice.
The circumstances surrounding Mary Habila’s death raise questions that demand answers. According to reports, she and a colleague arrived at Umahi’s residence on June 26, 2026. Habila died inside the residence the next day, June 27. Her body was carried out naked and placed in the ambulance that came for her. Neither Umahi, the Ebonyi State Police Command, nor the state government spoke publicly about the death for almost two weeks. It took an investigative report by Sahara Reporters, published on July 10, before the case became public knowledge. A serving police officer who works as Umahi’s personal assistant reportedly brought the two women to the residence. When Umahi did respond through his aide Francis Nwaze, he claimed she was his personal physiotherapist, an employee of the David Umahi Federal University of Health Sciences, Uburu, who had been on secondment to the Federal Ministry of Works for three years.
The African Democratic Congress has demanded that Umahi step aside pending an independent investigation, noting that a death in a cabinet minister’s home “transcends private tragedy and becomes a question of public accountability.” The Northern Youth Council of Nigeria has given him a seven-day ultimatum to resign, threatening nationwide protests if he refuses. These are not political enemies. These are citizens demanding what every citizen deserves: the truth.
Umahi has called those asking questions “evil people who claim to be freedom fighters” and warned that “the death of the purveyors of such falsehood will be worse.” This is a man who believes that power allows him to intimidate, threaten, and silence. This is a man who has forgotten that ministers are appointees of the President, not kings with immunity.
The ADC has accused the Tinubu administration of operating “a system of scandal insurance for its senior officials, where proximity to power appears to guarantee protection from accountability.” If President Tinubu fails to insist on accountability, Nigerians will conclude that his administration has become a “Cabinet of Cover-ups, where political convenience consistently takes precedence over transparency and accountability.”
Minister Umahi must resign. Not because he is guilty of a crime, that is for the courts to determine. He must resign because a serving minister who cannot be transparent about a death in his own home has lost the moral authority to hold public office. He must resign because threatening those who seek the truth is not the behaviour of a leader, but the behaviour of a tyrant. He must resign because silence in the face of such tragedy is complicity.
Mary Habila’s family deserves the truth. Nigerians deserve accountability. A visually-impaired human rights activist has called for a comprehensive investigation into the death, asking: “Why would a minister need a physiotherapist at his village home, away from his office and any clinic for three years, and why did it take a private media outfit, rather than the police or the state government, to tell the public that a woman had died there?” The Northern Youth Council has said it will “occupy the streets of Abuja, Kaduna, and Ebonyi State in daily, unrelenting protests until Umahi resigns or is removed to face the full wrath of the law.” They are right. We cannot sit by and watch the life of another young, promising Nigerian woman be reduced to a footnote of political cover-ups.
Shame on Umahi for hiding behind the courts. Shame on Umahi for threatening those who ask questions. Shame on Umahi for the 26-year-old woman who died in his home while he remained silent. Shame on Umahi for the legacy of waste and vanity in Ebonyi. Shame on Umahi for the widows and the elderly whose deaths he has on his hands. Shame on Umahi for the “professor” who is no professor at all. Shame on Umahi for the “big man” who cannot answer simple questions. Shame on Umahi for the minister who believes he is above the law. Shame on any system that protects him. And shame on us if we remain silent.
Khaleed Yazeed
Founder, Wakilin Yamma Youth Development Network
Katsina State, Nigeria
Leave a comment