by Mohammed Bello Doka
10 June, 2026.
There is a question hanging over Nigeria's justice system that no amount of legal jargon can obscure. A former governor from the North Central zone faces corruption allegations exceeding two hundred billion naira. He is not only walking free but has also been handed the senatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to contest the 2027 elections under the ruling party. A different former governor from the North West zone faces approximately twelve point five billion naira in allegations. He was granted bail, but the conditions attached have effectively kept him behind bars for weeks. The disparity is not subtle, and every Nigerian who still believes in the rule of law must ask aloud: are our courts fighting corruption or are they being used to fight political opposition?
The numbers are matters of public court records. Yahaya Bello, former governor of Kogi State and an active member of the APC, is facing multiple charges. In one case before Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja, he is alleged to have laundered eighty point two billion naira. In another case, alongside two co-defendants, the allegation rises to one hundred and ten point four billion naira for criminal breach of trust and money laundering. A third case, involving his nephew Ali Bello, adds ten point two seven billion naira to the tally. The total exceeds two hundred billion naira. On January 29, 2026, Justice Nwite granted Bello permission to travel to Saudi Arabia for ten days to perform Umrah. The prosecution did not object. The court ordered the temporary release of his international passport. The judge stated, "I have listened to the submissions of counsel in this matter and am minded to grant the application."
Now consider the political reality. On May 18, 2026, despite his ongoing corruption trials before the Federal High Court in Abuja, Yahaya Bello secured the APC senatorial ticket for Kogi Central with 72,399 votes, while his closest rival managed only 319. The Nigerian Constitution, Section 66, disqualifies a candidate only upon conviction; trial alone does not count. This is the letter of the law. But it is also a profound statement about who the system protects. A man can stand before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in the morning, walk to the party secretariat in the afternoon, and collect his nomination form. Bello's supporters see resilience. His opponents see a system that protects its own. For Nigerians watching from afar, it has never been clearer that you can be on trial and on the ballot at the same time. The APC, the ruling party, cleared Bello to contest for the Senate. He remains an APC member in good standing, actively participating in the party's electronic membership registration and rallying support for President Bola Tinubu's Renewed Hope agenda.
Now consider the case of Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State. On May 18, 2026, Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja granted him bail in the sum of one hundred million naira. But the conditions attached to that grant are, as human rights activist Ibrahim Garba Wala described in a press statement, "stringent and near-impossible." The court demanded that the surety must be a serving federal civil servant not below Grade Level 17, must reside in the highbrow Abuja districts of Maitama or Asokoro, must deposit an original Certificate of Occupancy for a property valued at hundreds of millions of naira, and must present proof of salary and tax clearance. El-Rufai himself must surrender his Nigerian and international passports and report to the Department of State Services headquarters on the last Friday of every month at exactly 10 a.m., with the judge warning that failure to meet any condition would lead to automatic revocation of bail. As of this writing, El-Rufai remains in detention because no such surety has come forward.
But here is the detail that transforms this from a legal anomaly into a political scandal. Yahaya Bello is not just a free man; he is an APC senator-in-waiting, endorsed by the ruling party to run for the National Assembly in 2027. He was electronically registered as a member of the APC on January 3, 2026, at Agasa Ward in Okene Local Government Area, in an event attended by the Kogi State APC chairman. He has been actively urging party members to continue supporting President Tinubu. Meanwhile, Nasir El-Rufai is no longer a member of the APC. On March 10, 2025, he announced his exit from the ruling party he helped found, declaring that he was leaving for the Social Democratic Party. He explained that the move would afford him the opportunity to join forces with like-minded people to ensure that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not secure a second term in 2027. Before his eventual defection, El-Rufai had told an Arise Television interviewer on February 24, 2025: "I am still in the APC and will remain until they have completely failed in their founding obligations. I did not leave the party; the party left me. I will surely leave it." On February 13, 2026, he was back on Arise Television, making clear his determination to stunt President Tinubu's continued stay in office beyond 2027. El-Rufai has since moved from the SDP to the African Democratic Congress (ADC), an opposition party, and has emerged as one of the administration's most outspoken critics. In February 2026, he alleged that the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission "procured the DSS to abduct me for them," and claimed that officials of the anti-graft agency have become "personal tools" of the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu. His son, Bello El-Rufai, also dumped the APC for the ADC. The father is now in opposition. The son has followed. And the former governor who helped deliver the presidency in 2023 sits in detention while the man he persuaded to step aside enjoys not only freedom but a senatorial ticket under the ruling party.
The Nigerian Bar Association has watched this unfold and has not remained silent. Its president, Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, has repeatedly warned that courts and law enforcement agencies have transformed bail from a constitutional mechanism to secure trial attendance into "an instrument of punitive, pre-trial incarceration." Osigwe has criticized what he calls the weaponisation of bail conditions, cautioning that such actions transform the courts into "an oppressive tool." He was unequivocal, stating that bail should not become "a privilege reserved only for those with extraordinary means or connections." Those words were not aimed at a hypothetical injustice. They describe exactly what is happening to El-Rufai.
Former Minister of Aviation, Chief Osita Chidoka, added his voice in a statement titled "Bail and the Dignity of the Law: A Call for Judicial Restraint." Chidoka argued that requiring a civil servant on Grade Level 16 or 17 to provide a surety bond of fifteen billion naira or to produce properties valued at five hundred million naira in Maitama or Asokoro is a logistical absurdity. He noted that a civil servant who begins at Grade Level 08 and rises to Grade Level 16 after nearly three decades might earn between eighty million and one hundred million naira across an entire career. "By the court's ruling," he said, "we are asking that officer to show assets worth five times his lifetime earnings, and to stand behind a liability of fifteen billion naira, roughly one hundred and fifty times everything an honest career could ever yield." Chidoka concluded that a court which finds no real risk of flight cannot, in the same breath, impose conditions fit for a fugitive of vast and unexplained means. He also questioned the rationale behind demanding such extensive financial guarantees, saying the conditions suggest that lawful public service cannot produce the level of wealth courts appear to require from individuals considered trustworthy.
The law is not ambiguous on this point. Section 165 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, commands that bail conditions shall not be excessive. The Court of Appeal in the case of Dasuki v. Director-General, State Security Service, struck down conditions similar to those imposed on El-Rufai, ruling that expecting civil servants to provide multi-million naira property sureties is a violation of public service frameworks. That judgment is binding on all lower courts. It is being ignored. When a court ignores a binding decision of the Court of Appeal, it ceases to function as a court of law and begins to function as an instrument of policy.
The human rights activist Ibrahim Garba Wala issued a press statement titled "When Bail Becomes a Weapon: The El-Rufai Case and the Alarming Rise of the Slow Death Detention Plot." He warned that the indefinite confinement of a citizen whose physical well-being is actively at risk has evolved into "a calculated strategy of physical and psychological attrition." He noted that the court, by keeping El-Rufai structurally locked out of perfecting his bail, allows his detractors to achieve through judicial frustration what they cannot legally justify. Wala added that if El-Rufai is allowed to suffer a silent, systematic breakdown in custody under the guise of impossible bail, it will mark "a serious blow to constitutional liberty in Nigeria." He concluded with a warning that "the world is watching."
The political analyst and commentator Ibrahim Nuhu Saidu, writing under the title "The Blueprint of the Cage," warned that Nigerians make a fatal mistake when they look at El-Rufai's case as an isolated event. Saidu argued that "the state is drawing a map and showing every future leader exactly how the trap is built." He described an assembly line: first the invitation, then the unnecessary detention, then the media narrative set before charges are filed, then the impossible bail, then the endless adjournments. "This is not justice," Saidu wrote. "This is an assembly line. And the product is a neutralized opponent." He concluded that "the blueprint does not care about party, about ethnicity, about current loyalty. Today it is a former governor. Tomorrow it could be a sitting senator, a vocal journalist, or a student leader who dares to ask where the money went."
The irony that hangs over this entire affair is almost too bitter to state plainly. During the buildup to the 2023 general election, it was Nasir El-Rufai who deployed his political machinery across the country to secure votes for President Bola Tinubu. It was El-Rufai who prevailed on Yahaya Bello to set aside his own presidential ambition and throw the weight of Kogi State behind the eventual winner. Multiple political analysts have confirmed that El-Rufai played a pivotal role in that decision. Yet today, the man who delivered that support is effectively detained while the man he convinced to step aside enjoys not only freedom but the official endorsement of the ruling party for a Senate seat. Political analyst Segun Sowunmi publicly cautioned President Tinubu against what he called the betrayal of El-Rufai and Bello, noting that they "campaigned vigorously for Tinubu during the 2023 presidential election but have been left out of power, a situation that looks like a betrayal." Sowunmi warned that continued attacks on the former governors would affect the president's second-term ambition in 2027. That warning appears to have gone unheeded, and the consequences for the rule of law are now unfolding in real time.
History offers a sobering lesson for those who weaponize courts for political ends. The military regime of General Sani Abacha attempted to silence opposition through politically motivated show trials, most notoriously against Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Abiola was detained on treason charges, denied medical attention, and died in detention in 1998. His wife, Kudirat Abiola, was assassinated in 1996. The regime did not survive. Abacha died suddenly in 1998, and his regime collapsed into infamy. Nigeria became a pariah state. International sanctions were imposed. The political persecution did not save the persecutors; it condemned them to the judgment of history. Every government that has attempted to use the courts as an instrument of political vendetta has ultimately discovered that such weapons turn inward, corrupting the wielders and destabilizing the institutions they commandeered.
The National Judicial Council cannot remain silent while courts under its supervisory authority impose bail conditions that the law explicitly forbids. The NJC has the power to investigate judicial officers who disregard binding appellate precedents and violate the express provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act. It must exercise that power. The Nigerian Bar Association must escalate its intervention from statements of concern to formal complaints and, where necessary, disciplinary action against judges who persist in imposing excessive conditions. The NBA President has spoken. The Bar must now act.
We call on the Chief Justice of Nigeria to issue practice directions clarifying that bail conditions under Section 165 of the ACJA shall not be excessive, that civil servants cannot be required to produce assets beyond their legitimate earnings, and that passport surrender for sureties shall not be imposed except in the most compelling circumstances. We call on the Attorney-General of the Federation to ensure that prosecutorial decisions are guided by evidence and law, not by political loyalty or personal vendetta. And we call on every Nigerian who believes in the rule of law to demand that the same impossible standards applied to El-Rufai be applied to Bello, or that the leniency shown to Bello be extended to El-Rufai. The principle must be one law for all, or it is not law at all.
The law must be a shield, not a snare. The court must be a sanctuary of truth, not a theater of attrition. If we allow the state to perfect the art of the political cage, we surrender our democracy. We surrender our future. The question before us is not whether Nasir El-Rufai is guilty or innocent. That is a matter for trial. The question is whether Nigeria is building a justice system or a weapon. The world is watching. History is recording. The choice is ours. Choose wisely.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
Tags
Opinion