A political aspirant in Nigeria who presented himself as a 30-year-old man with dwarfism has stepped away from an upcoming election after documents emerged suggesting he is actually a teenager.
Mahmud Sadis Buba, from Kaduna State, had been campaigning to represent the Sabon Gari Federal Constituency in the Nigerian House of Representatives ahead of the 2027 general elections. A registered member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Buba styled himself as an ambitious community servant, drawing notice for his remarkably youthful appearance, which he attributed to dwarfism.
His unconventional profile earned him affectionate nicknames, most notably “The Wonder of Zaria/Zazzau,” a moniker that nodded both to his political drive and his child-like frame. But what many accepted as a medical explanation for his appearance may have been something far simpler: his actual age.
The story began to unravel when a man claiming to be Buba’s former teacher stated publicly that Buba was in his mid-teens. Shortly after, a family member alleged that Buba was a younger sibling who had been using his older brother’s identity documents to present a fabricated biography.
According to reports, a collection of records then surfaced online, including a birth certificate, a passport, a national identification number slip, and school documents.
Those records placed his birth year at 2010, not 1995 as he had claimed, which would have made him just 15 years old at the time of the APC’s candidate screening.
None of the documents have been officially authenticated, but the weight of public pressure proved decisive. Following consultations with party stakeholders, political associates, and family members, Buba withdrew his candidacy for the 2027 elections.
The episode has prompted pointed questions about the APC’s internal vetting process. Many observers have struggled to reconcile how someone managed to pass through the party’s candidate screening with documentation that, if the allegations prove accurate, belonged to an entirely different person.
