Mavo, the 22 year old Edo State singer who broke out in 2025 with “Escaladizzy,” spent Wednesday and Thursday this week publicly apologising to a list of Nigerian superstars after old tweets criticising them resurfaced online and set off a fast-moving backlash. The posts, which multiple Nigerian entertainment outlets date to 2023, targeted Davido, Ayra Starr, Kizz Daniel and Fireboy DML. By September 24 and 25, screenshots were circulating widely enough that Mavo felt compelled to address it directly on X.
It is a small story on its face: a young artist’s old tweets came back to bite him. But it lands at a specific moment in Mavo’s career, right as he has gone from a bedroom-adjacent name to someone with real features on his resume, including “Money Constant” with Wizkid and “Body (Danz)” with CKay, the latter his first number one song in Nigeria. The apology is as much a career-management moment as it is a personal one, and it says something about how thin the line has gotten between old-school gossip blogs and the permanent, searchable record that platforms like X now keep on every artist coming up through them.
What Actually Happened
According to Pulse Nigeria and NotJustOk, both of which published on the story September 24 and 25 respectively, old tweets from Mavo’s university years resurfaced this week containing harsh criticism of Davido, Ayra Starr, Kizz Daniel and Fireboy DML. Nigerian entertainment site Gistlover, which also covered the resurfacing, reported that among the old posts was a claim about Davido that the outlet explicitly flagged as false. None of the outlets that reported the story detail the exact wording of that claim, and Davido has not addressed it publicly as of this writing. It is worth being precise here: this is not a fresh allegation InterSpace Daily is reporting on Davido. It is a description of an old, discredited post that its own author is now disowning.
Mavo’s initial reaction, when the tweets first started circulating, was dismissive. He told followers to “get your life together and stop dissecting my past thoughts,” pointing out that he now runs his own label and a storefront at 22. That posture did not hold. By the next day he had shifted to a full apology, posted on X:
“I was a bad entertainment critic when I started uni until I realized superstars don’t really care about Twitter. I stopped criticizing and focused solely on my music and since then it’s been bliss. My criticism sadly, unfortunately and unintentionally hurt quite a number of people and I’m honestly sorry. I have met most of these people and they actually turn out to be amazing people. I’m sorry for my misjudgment. Let love lead.”
The apology has been reproduced near word for word across NotJustOk, Pulse Nigeria and Gistlover, giving it solid multi-outlet corroboration on the quote itself, even where the outlets differ slightly on whether the post landed September 24 or 25.
The Reaction Was Not Uniformly Forgiving
Gistlover’s coverage captured two representative responses in the replies: one user acknowledged the tone of the apology but said they remained unconvinced it was sincere, and another accused Mavo of only apologising because of the backlash, claiming he had quietly deleted some of the old posts while leaving others up. That second claim is unverified beyond the one commenter citing it, and InterSpace Daily is not treating it as established fact, but it captures the skepticism running through the replies: an apology issued under pressure, days after the fact, reads differently to a Nigerian Twitter audience than one volunteered before the screenshots started spreading.
None of Davido, Ayra Starr, Kizz Daniel or Fireboy DML have publicly responded to Mavo’s apology as of this writing, according to every outlet that has covered the story so far. That silence cuts both ways. It could mean the artists in question consider the matter closed and beneath a response, or it could mean they are simply choosing not to engage a much smaller artist publicly, which is its own kind of statement in an industry where a co-sign or a subtweet from a Davido carries real commercial weight.
Why This Is Bigger Than One Apology
Nigerian music Twitter has always had a long memory, but what is changing is who gets caught by it. A decade ago, an aspiring artist’s old tweets rarely mattered because most aspiring artists never broke through to the level where anyone went looking. Mavo’s case is different precisely because he did break through, fast enough that the criticism he posted as an anonymous-ish university student calling out “superstars” is now being read as commentary from someone who has actual industry proximity to the people he criticized, including a Wizkid feature and a number one record.
That is the real risk for any rising Nigerian artist building a career on social media virality: the same platform that gets you discovered keeps a receipt of everything you said before you were anyone. Labels and managers increasingly have to think about legacy social media accounts the way a publicist thinks about old interviews, not because young artists are unusually reckless, but because the audience that made them famous is the same audience combing through their timeline for contradictions the moment they start winning.
What We Are Not Reporting
To be direct about the limits of what is confirmed: the specific content of the old tweets beyond “harsh criticism” and one claim about Davido that outlets have already labelled false has not been independently verified by InterSpace Daily, and we are not reproducing screenshots or restating the disputed claim in more detail than the outlets that broke the story. Mavo has apologised for the substance of what he said without either he or the outlets spelling out every line, and none of the named artists have put out a statement confirming or disputing specifics. Anything beyond that is speculation, and this is not the piece for it.
What is solid: a rising Nigerian artist’s 2023 tweets resurfaced this week, he initially brushed off the criticism, then issued a public apology to Davido, Ayra Starr, Kizz Daniel and Fireboy DML by name, and the reaction online has been mixed. That is a real, sourced, breaking story about how Nigerian music’s social media culture polices its own rising stars, and it is worth watching whether any of the four artists named eventually responds, or whether the industry simply lets it pass the way it often does once the news cycle moves on to the next chart record or album drop.
