The Management of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, has dismissed as false and malicious a viral AI-generated video alleging that the institution is developing nuclear weapons for Nigeria.
In a statement signed by the university’s Director of Public Affairs, Auwalu Umar, the management described the video, which has been circulating on social media, as the handiwork of “unscrupulous persons” bent on misleading the public and tarnishing the image of the university.
The video had claimed that Nigerian scientists at ABU secretly enriched weapons-grade uranium in the 1980s using sophisticated centrifuges obtained from Pakistan’s AQ Khan network, and that they were close to producing a nuclear device by 1987.
But the university said the claims were “baseless fabrications,” pointing out that most of the scientists at the Centre for Energy Research and Training (CERT), ABU, were still undergoing training abroad in the 1980s and only returned to the country in the early 1990s. “How could it have been possible for trainee scientists to enrich uranium?” the statement queried.
It clarified that ABU and Nigeria have never had any connection with the AQ Khan network or any foreign source of nuclear weapons technology, adding that the only operational nuclear facility at the time was a 14 MeV Neutron Generator commissioned in 1988.
According to the university, the country’s first major nuclear project, the Nigeria Research Reactor 1 (NIRR-1), was only initiated in 1996 under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) technical cooperation programme and commissioned in 2004 under a tripartite partnership involving China, Nigeria, and the IAEA.
ABU stressed that all its nuclear activities have been transparent and conducted in line with international safety and non-proliferation standards. It explained that the NIRR-1 reactor, initially powered by highly enriched uranium, was converted to low enriched uranium in 2018 as part of global efforts to reduce nuclear threats.
