On the morning of 28 June 2026, colleagues of Mary Habila forced open the door of a guest house on the Uburu estate of Minister of Works David Umahi and found her dead. The tap was still running. Nearly three weeks passed before Umahi addressed the matter publicly, and when he did, on Thursday 16 July, he was forced to begin by correcting the basic facts — including what the woman actually did for a living.
The incident has since drawn accusations of political cover-up, calls for the minister to step aside, and a wave of online commentary that Umahi himself has threatened to prosecute under cyberbullying laws. Before any of that noise can be properly assessed, it is worth establishing what is actually known.
Who was Mary Habila?
Habila was a nurse attached to the David Umahi Federal University of Medical Sciences in Uburu, Ebonyi State — not a physiotherapist, as early reports had stated. Umahi corrected that detail himself when he finally spoke to journalists, describing her as someone who had lived on his property for three years and was, in his words, “like a daughter” to him. She shared the guest house — a building separate from the minister’s main residence — with one other female staff member from Benue State. Umahi’s family had also been covering her medical expenses at Turkish Hospital in Abuja, with the most recent payment of ₦2.2 million made on 5 April 2026, suggesting she had been receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition for some time before her death.
What happened on the night she died?
According to Umahi’s account, Habila telephoned her boyfriend late on the night of 27 June and told him she was experiencing a nosebleed. He advised her to inform a superior, and she reportedly said the bleeding had eased. Her boyfriend then ended the call, not wanting to aggravate her condition. She asked him not to hang up. He did anyway. Three minutes later, he rang back. She did not answer. The following morning, when colleagues could not reach her, they broke down the door and found her dead, with the tap still running — suggesting she had been about to bathe when she collapsed.
That sequence of events, as presented by the minister, paints a picture of a sudden medical episode rather than anything more sinister. The door, Umahi stressed, was locked from the inside and had to be forced open — a detail he offered as evidence against foul play. Whether that account is complete, however, is precisely what an autopsy would help determine.
Why has there been no autopsy?
This is where the story becomes more complicated, and more troubling. Umahi says he instructed his lawyers to request a post-mortem examination, but Habila’s family refused on cultural grounds. He has since directed that the body not be moved until an autopsy is carried out, creating a standoff that serves no one — least of all the family seeking closure or the public seeking clarity. The minister has also reported the matter to the Inspector-General of Police and requested that the investigation be transferred to Abuja, which at least suggests some appetite for formal scrutiny, even if the pace has been painfully slow.
The core problem is this: a young woman with a known medical condition died suddenly and unwitnessed on the property of a serving federal minister, and nearly three weeks elapsed before any official statement was issued. That delay, whatever its explanation, created the information vacuum in which speculation and political opportunism flourished.
What are the political dimensions?
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar moved quickly to exploit the silence, calling on President Bola Tinubu to direct Umahi to step aside while investigations continue. Atiku, in a personally signed statement, criticised the administration for offering no public acknowledgement for almost a fortnight — no word from the presidency, the Inspector-General of Police, or the Federal Executive Council — until an online news outlet forced the story into the open. That criticism, whatever one makes of its source, is not entirely without basis. The absence of any proactive official communication for nearly three weeks was a failure of basic transparency.
Umahi, for his part, is frustrated. “What baffles me is that everything becomes politics in this country,” he told journalists, questioning whether a minister should be held personally responsible for a death that occurred in a guest house on his property. His frustration is understandable, but it does not answer the question — it sidesteps it. The issue is not whether he caused her death; it is whether the response to her death has been adequate, and on that measure, the record so far is thin.
What should happen next?
Umahi’s threat to pursue cyberbullying charges against those spreading what he calls false information online is a separate matter entirely, and one that should not be allowed to chill legitimate public interest in the case. Holding powerful people to account is not cyberbullying. Spreading fabricated claims is. The two are not the same, and conflating them — deliberately or otherwise — is a tactic this country has seen too many times before.
Mary Habila deserves a clear answer about how she died. So does Nigeria.