By Nura Ridwan Ibrahim
The Ahmadu Bello University, ABU Zaria, has falsified a social media video claiming its engagement in nurturing Nuclear Weaponry for Nigeria.
The institution’s Director of Public Affairs Directorate, Malam Auwalu Umar uncovered this in a statement issued to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, 25 October, 2025, in Zaria.
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The director described the audio-visual contents as AI-generated, extremely misleading and unfounded, which aimed at misinforming the public about Nigeria’s peaceful nuclear energy programme.
He said the video falsely claimed that Nigerian scientists in the 1980s secretly enriched weapons-grade uranium in Kaduna and that, ABU researchers possessed centrifugal equipment from the first Muslim nuclear possessor, AQ Khan network in Pakistan.
He also said that most of the institution’s scientists working at the Centre for Energy Research and Training (CERT) were still undergoing training abroad as at 1980s and could not have participated in uranium enrichment. Adding that, ABU had no any connections with the AQ Khan network and had never been given any equipment for the construction of a centrifuge or nuclear device in Nigeria.
The director expressed that by 1987, the only nuclear facility at the university was a 14 MeV Neutron Generator, which became operational in 1988.
In his further efforts to falsify the claim, Umar said that, “Nigeria’s first nuclear reactor (NIRR-1) was established much later in 1996 under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Technical Cooperation Programme and commissioned in 2004,”
He also added that, Nigeria’s nuclear activities had always been transparent and pursued strictly for peaceful purposes, in line with the country’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Pelindaba Treaty, which ban the development of nuclear weapons.
He reaffirmed that, the Centre for Energy Research and Training, established in 1976, operates in collaboration with the IAEA and international partners from the US, Russia, and China, and it has never engaged in any clandestine nuclear weapons programmes.
Umar further said that, although the ABU’s founder, late Sir Ahmadu Bello, had revealed pioneer concerns with peaceful atomic research following his visit to the Museum of Atomic Energy at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States in 1960, two years before ABU was established, the university has never engaged in or applied for any illegal or controversial activities regarding nuclear development.
He also reaffirmed the institution’s mania for advancement in science and technology for humanity and Nigeria’s international obligations on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
