A story making the rounds on social media, claiming that the judge who led the panel affirming President Bola Tinubu’s 2023 election victory has gone blind after eye surgery in London, does not hold up. Checks show the claim is false.
The story has spread on X and other platforms since around July 3, with some posts naming a “Justice Tsamma Abubakar” as the affected judge, while a separate graphic pins the same tale on Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the sitting Chief Justice of Nigeria. Neither version survives basic scrutiny. There is no record of a Justice Tsamma Abubakar at either the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, and Kekere-Ekun, who became Chief Justice in August 2024, never chaired the Presidential Election Petition Court and has made no public statement about any illness.
The tribunal that actually dismissed the petitions against Tinubu’s election in September 2023 was led by Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani of the Court of Appeal, sitting alongside justices Stephen Adah, Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf, Moses Ugo and Abba Mohammed. Tsammani was elevated to the Supreme Court in December 2023. No verified reporting from Nigeria’s judiciary, the courts themselves, or mainstream news organisations supports any suggestion that he or any other member of that panel has lost his sight.
This is not even the first time such a claim has targeted Tsammani. Back in October 2023, a similar rumour alleged he was gravely ill and confined to a wheelchair following the tribunal’s ruling. Court of Appeal officials dismissed that story at the time too, confirming he was attending court sessions and carrying out his duties as normal.
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The graphics behind the current claim carry the familiar fingerprints of fabricated news design, complete with a manufactured headline, an invented “What We Know” box, and a quote attributed to an unnamed “Spokesperson, Federal Judicial Service,” a body that does not exist under that name anywhere in Nigeria’s judicial structure. Several accounts helping the story travel, including at least one flagged parody account, present it as satire or commentary rather than verified news, even as it continues to circulate as fact.
