TheCable

Recently, Wizkid had to clear the air publicly and surely had some explaining to do with his off-and-on girlfriend, Tania Omotayo, after tweets posted from his official account that he was “25, single and enjoying life”.

Wizkid’s Twitter account was hacked a day before his birthday on July 15. Over the past several years, celebrities have become hot targets for internet scammers and web delinquents. The motivation appears to be tricking unsuspecting friends and fans into parting with cash while others are simply agents of mischief and confusion who get their amusement from tearing down hard built reputations.

The list of hacked celebrity accounts has been growing since 2012 to include the likes of Ramsey Nouah, Monalisa Chinda, Chidinma, Iyanya, IK Ogbonna and many more. Here is a top 5 pick of some of the worst celebrity hacking scandals in Nigeria.

ASISAT OSHOALA

In the run-up to just-concluded Women’s World Cup in Canada, several disturbing posts appeared on the Super Falcon’s star forward’s account, triggering concern from Nigerians. The disturbing posts depicted a depressed Asisat contemplating suicide.

Asisat quickly regained control of her account and calmed the nerves of Nigerians that she was doing just fine and her account was only hacked.

“Yes, my acct. was HACKED!! I’m doing great and training with my other Super Falcons…and there is no stopping us! Thank u for the love/concern. I’m ready for this WORLD CUP!!!” she wrote.

RUGGED MAN

Rugged man, whose real name is Micheal Stephens, was subjected to some serious embarrassment by some unidentified enemies when sexually explicit images and videos were posted on his Instagram page in April.

The video involved a naked woman bouncing and backing it all up on camera. What was even more embarrassing was the caption which read:

“Me and my ladies are in your town for the weekend, we are going to party hard and have group sex with both men and women, if you want to be part of this follow the freaks below”. The rest of it was even more shocking stuff. The post showed Ruggedman replying: OK!! Meaning he was down for all the proposed fun.

The public had their feel of the scandal for a short while before Ruggedman quickly released statement exposing the hack to everyone’s relief. Thankfully, Ruggedman has since regained control of his account.

ORITSEFEMI

The Double Wahala hit maker had a major face covering moment on his Instagram account when some of his supposed Instagram conversations with several females were ‘leaked’. The conversations showed oritsefemi, well, ‘making moves’ on different women, trying to entice them with an all-expense paid visit to come and see him.

A few days later, Oritsefemi then posted a picture of his fiancée and baby mama, Blessing Rawa on his Instagram page, accusing her of hacking into his account and releasing those conversations. “Feel free 2 c de face of my hacker…asenibaniduro,” he wrote.

Blessing denied any involvement with the hacking in a statement post on her Instagram page, which caused further embarrassment or you could say ‘Double wahala’ for the singer. “This is really surprising to me as I wasn’t around him when his phone got hacked or in Lagos, neither do I have the password to his IG account,” she wrote.

“How I could have hacked a personal phone that I don’t own beats me. I will never betray you like this Femi, I have always resolved to settling (sic) our issues in private no matter how bad it is. I can understand if you want to end the relationship and move on with your life, I’d accept that as the will of God but you don’t need to disgrace me publicly and drag my name to the mud all because of fame. I am writing this openly and demand you delete that post and show some respect to me and the years we spent together which is now a bad memory for me. How can you be so heartless and cruel?”

YEMI ALADE

In February, the Johnny singing sensation was on tour in Europe when some highly-implicating prison-worthy images were shared on her Instagram page.

The image was of American rapper Snoop Dogg holding up a bag of Marijuana with the caption: “Who want to smoke weed with me?” In case that didn’t get enough attention, more images were released hours later and this time, it was a supposed screen shot of a conversation between Yemi Alade and rapper Phyno, which were obviously contrived by mischief makers.

The caption read: Lol. So Phyno have been nacking yemi. This is cool stuff. Yemi Alade’s PR team responded soon after the second post and the account was shut down. Yemi revealed that the incident, though not her own doing, caused some damage to her reputation and lost her close to 90, 000 followers on social media. With major nominations and accolades this year, Yemi Alade looks to have recovered quite nicely.

FLAVOUR, D’BANJ AND TUFACE

This was the first big celebrity hacking case that became known to the public in February 2012 and involved many of Nigeria’s biggest celebrities such as The Kokomaster D’banj, Tuface Idibia and Igbo crooner Flavour Nabania.

The hackers started with flavour by changing his profile picture and putting naked breasts on display, and then used his account to announce that D’banj’s account was also under their control.

Then they warned other celebrities, including Don Jazzy, Tuface, banky W and Wizkid, that they are all targets to be ‘exposed’ by the hackers. They boasted of having up to 30 celebrity accounts under their control and promised to move to politicians after they’re done with the celebrities.

It got many celebrities shaking in their studio’s and Don Jazzy had to quickly delete all his DM’s and even begged the anonymous miscreants to spare him.

Not long after that, Tuface confirmed that the hackers made good on their promise and he had lost control of his Twitter account. He abandoned the compromised account while flavour retrieved his account from the hackers a month later.