The recent, powerful intervention by the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, regarding the weaponization of bail conditions, has exposed a severe rot currently eating away at Nigeria’s administration of criminal justice. As the NBA rightly noted, courts and law enforcement agencies have increasingly transformed bail from a constitutional mechanism to secure trial attendance into an instrument of punitive, pre-trial incarceration.
Nowhere is this alarming trend more dangerously or explicitly exemplified than in the ongoing judicial and state-sponsored ordeal of the former Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai.
In recent days, the public space has been flooded with terrifying rumors regarding the health and alleged demise of Malam Nasir El-Rufai in custody.
While his family has formally debunked this false alarm and confirmed he is alive, the fact that such a rumor gained immediate, nationwide traction reveals a chilling truth: Nigerians are deeply terrified for his safety.
This rumor did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the natural consequence of a growing public panic that the treatment meted out to El-Rufai has crossed the line from a routine legal process into a highly coordinated, malicious silence and slow-death trap.
The Anatomy of an Impossible Bail: A De Facto Death Wish.
The stringent, near-impossible conditions attached to El-Rufai’s bail perfectly capture the exact institutional overreach condemned by the NBA leadership. Requiring multiple sureties who must be serving federal civil servants on Grade Level 17, demanding original Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) for landed properties worth hundreds of millions of naira in ultra-expensive enclaves like Maitama or Asokoro, and forcing restrictive check-ins at security headquarters create an insurmountable barrier to freedom.
As the Court of Appeal clearly ruled in Dasuki v. DG, SSS, expecting civil servants to provide multi-million naira properties is not only a logistical absurdity but a flagrant violation of public service frameworks.
“Bail conditions must be tailored solely to ensure attendance at trial. They must never serve as instruments of punishment prior to conviction. Conditions that cannot be met amount in substance to a refusal of bail.”
– Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015.
By keeping El-Rufai structurally locked out of perfecting his bail, his detractors are achieving through judicial frustration what they cannot legally justify. The indefinite confinement of a citizen whose physical well-being is actively at risk. This is no longer about accountability, it has evolved into a calculated strategy of physical and psychological attrition.
A Dangerous Nexus:
Ideological Vindictiveness and Political Settling of Scores.
We cannot ignore the deeply troubling political undercurrents driving this relentless persecution.
Malam Nasir El-Rufai’s tenure as Governor of Kaduna State was defined by bold, uncompromising structural and governance reforms. While these reforms reshaped the state, they also inevitably created powerful, entrenched adversaries.
Highly credible insights from political analysts point to a far more sinister reality: the machinery of state enforcement is currently being driven by a dangerous convergence of historical adversaries and entrenched political interest groups who are vengeancefully capitalizing on this persecution to extract an institutional pound of flesh.
On one side, certain elements within the current security and government apparatus are utilizing this judicial theatre to settle old scores rooted in past ideological clashes and historical state-led security crackdowns. Concurrently, powerful regional factions are leveraging long-standing grudges over El-Rufai’s aggressive structural reforms, security policies, and bold political reconfigurations that permanently upset traditional power dynamics.
By capturing or heavily influencing the machinery of federal law enforcement, these combined forces have transformed what should be a transparent legal process into a coordinated proxy war. It is an unholy alliance using the courts not to seek justice, but to execute a long-awaited vendetta.
A Call to Save the Rule of Law.
The NBA President was unequivocal:
“Bail should not become a privilege reserved only for those with extraordinary means or connections.” In El-Rufai’s case, even extraordinary means are being nullified by design.
We urgently call on the judiciary, particularly the presiding judges handling these matters, to live up to their billing as the last hope of constitutional justice:
1. Immediate Bail Variation: The courts must immediately review and vary El-Rufai’s bail conditions to realistic, achievable parameters that do not require turning civil servants into real estate moguls.
2. Neutralize Sectarian and Political Agendas:
The leadership of the DSS, ICPC, and the Federal Government must look inward and flush out biased actors using state infrastructure to settle historical grievances.
3. Preserve the Presumption of Innocence:
The state must stop treating an unconvicted citizen as a condemned convict.
If Malam Nasir El-Rufai is allowed to suffer a silent, systematic breakdown in custody under the guise of “impossible bail,” it will mark the formal burial of constitutional liberty in Nigeria.
The world is watching.
Comrade Wala is a Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Activist
