A single social media post that told Nigerians to pull their money out of one of the country’s largest payment platforms has ended in an arrest, three seized phones and an open police file.
The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre says it arrested Hafsat Abubakar, 27, on September 4, 2026, in connection with a forged document circulating online that claimed OPay Digital Services Limited was shutting down its operations. Details of the arrest were made public at a briefing at the centre’s Abuja headquarters, with Force Public Relations Officer Anietie Iniedu presenting the account of the investigation. Abubakar was described as a graduate of Library and Information Science from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
What makes the case unusual is not the rumour itself but the speed and scale of its spread, and the fact that a fintech company treated it as a security matter rather than a public relations problem.
According to the police account, the document was built to pass as official OPay correspondence. It carried the company’s logo, corporate branding, name and what investigators described as a purported management signature and endorsement. Its message was that the platform would cease operations, in the version that circulated most widely, from September 1, 2026, a date that has since passed without incident.
Investigators say the trail began with a petition. OPay submitted a formal complaint to the police on August 31, 2026, through the office of the Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of the Force Criminal Investigation Department, asking that those behind the document be identified. The cybercrime centre then applied digital forensic tools and online tracing, which police say linked the publication to an X account they identified as belonging to Abubakar, cited in police material as @HAIFAH_ER_ABBA. Some accounts of the case render the handle slightly differently, a detail likely to be settled in court documents rather than in press statements.
Police further allege that she amplified the notice through a second X account, @CUTE_HAFSERH, tagging social media influencers and attaching a four word instruction: “REMOVE YOUR MONEY NOW.” That post, according to the Force, drew roughly 572,000 views within minutes. Three Apple mobile phones were recovered and retained as exhibits. During preliminary questioning, police say, Abubakar told investigators she had taken the notice from a WhatsApp status rather than created it, and the Force has said its investigation continues into who produced the document and who else may have shared it. No charge has been filed, and the police have indicated that any prosecution will follow the conclusion of investigations. Abubakar remains, in law, presumed innocent.
The arrest did not come out of nowhere. Before involving the police, OPay had gone the civil route. Legal notices dated August 31 and September 1, signed by the company’s Chief Legal Counsel, Akinfolabi Moses Rokosu, were issued to three social media accounts: Adamu B. Garba II on X, the TikTok account @viralgrabtvng, and the X account Cute Hafserh. The notices described the shutdown claims as false, harmful and defamatory, and demanded deletions, retractions and public apologies, with a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on September 1. In the case of the post attributed to Garba, the company objected additionally that it promoted a rival wallet product alongside the shutdown claim. OPay also stated publicly that it remained fully licensed and operational, and that important customer information would come through its own channels.
The commercial stakes explain the intensity of the response. OPay began in 2018 under Opera Limited, pivoted from a super app model into payments, and now sits near the centre of Nigeria’s retail money movement. The company said in June 2026 that it had passed 45 million users and more than one million merchants. Independent estimates run higher, with figures above 50 million registered users, about 10 million daily active users and roughly 12 billion dollars in monthly transaction volume appearing in industry analyses and in Opera’s April 2026 securities filing, which implied a valuation of about 3.1 billion dollars. Reports in 2026 have also placed the company in preparation for a United States listing at a target valuation near 4 billion dollars. These user and valuation figures come from company statements, investor filings and third party estimates that do not fully agree, and should be read as indicative rather than settled.
The regulatory picture matters too. OPay holds a Central Bank of Nigeria mobile money operator licence, upgraded to national status in January 2026, and its wallet balances fall under Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation cover for mobile money. In a system where tens of millions of small balances sit on a single platform, a credible looking shutdown notice is not merely embarrassing. It is a liquidity risk, which is why the company’s operations chief and legal counsel both framed the episode as one involving public panic rather than reputation alone.
The legal question ahead is narrower than the public conversation suggests. Nigeria’s Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 was amended on February 28, 2024, after an ECOWAS Court of Justice ruling that its Section 24 was incompatible with regional and international free expression guarantees. The amended Section 24(1) criminalises knowingly sending false material by computer system for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order or posing a threat to life, and carries a fine of up to seven million naira, up to three years imprisonment, or both. That narrowing means prosecutors must now prove purpose, not merely falsity and alarm. Forgery and impersonation provisions may prove more straightforward if the origin of the document is established.
For ordinary users, the practical lesson is the one the Force closed on: verify claims about banks and fintechs through the institution’s own channels before moving money. Panic travels faster than correction, and in this case it took only minutes to reach half a million screens.