Ali Ahmed Yusuf
There are moments in the life of a man, especially one, who has held several public offices, when silence is not weakness, restraint is not surrender and sobriety is not an admission of guilt. They are, rather, the minimum requirements of dignity when the law has summoned one to account. For Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna State, such a moment ought to be now.
He is facing criminal proceedings arising from allegations of corruption, abuse of office, financial impropriety and related offences allegedly committed during his eight-year tenure. He denies the allegations and, like every accused person, is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair hearing. But the right to a fair hearing does not confer the right to choose the religion, ethnicity or geographical origin of the judge before whom a case is heard. Nor does it permit a defendant to turn a criminal proceeding into another theatre of Kaduna’s old ethno-religious anxieties.
Yet that appears to be the troubling direction of El-Rufai’s latest gambit.
In petitions seeking the removal of Justice Darius Hyet Khobo from his corruption trial, El-Rufai raised allegations of judicial bias and placed particular emphasis on the judge’s Christian faith and Southern Kaduna origin. He alleged that the judge had participated in gatherings with political, religious and community leaders in Southern Kaduna where commitments were supposedly made to deny him bail and secure his conviction.
These are serious allegations. But the independent three-member body constituted by the Chief Judge of Kaduna State to investigate the petitions found no evidence to substantiate them. Its report, dated August 18, 2026, was categorical that the allegation was unproven and that there was no basis for transferring the case. The following day, the Chief Judge accepted the report and directed Justice Khobo to continue with the hearing and determination of the matter in accordance with the law and fairness.
That decision deserves more than passing attention because this matter goes beyond one defendant or one judge. It touches a much larger question: whether Kaduna, after decades of painful ethno-religious suspicion, is finally prepared to move beyond the politics of identity.
Kaduna cannot afford a return to the poisonous logic that makes citizens judge public institutions through the prism of faith and geography. A judge is not impartial or partial because he is Christian or Muslim. Neither does his place of birth determine the quality of his judicial reasoning. If that were the standard, the Nigerian judiciary would become impossible to constitute.
The courtroom is where identity must yield to evidence and law. The question before a judge is not whether the accused is Muslim or Christian, Hausa or Fulani, from Northern Kaduna or Southern Kaduna. The question is whether the prosecution has established its case according to law.
That is why El-Rufai’s argument is so troubling. To suggest that a Christian judge from Southern Kaduna cannot fairly determine a case involving a former governor is to give ethnic and religious identity a judicial significance it should never possess. It risks reinforcing precisely the prejudices responsible leadership ought to extinguish.
Kaduna has known too much suffering from such thinking. The state’s history contains painful episodes in which political grievances became entangled with religious and ethnic suspicion. Communities have paid heavily for the manipulation of these fault lines, and the scars remain. Every responsible leader should therefore understand that language capable of reopening old wounds must be deployed with extraordinary restraint.
El-Rufai, more than most, should understand this. He governed Kaduna for eight years and cannot be unaware of the combustible nature of its social composition. Whatever one’s assessment of his administration, Kaduna’s politics during that period became deeply polarised, with the relationship between Northern and Southern Kaduna frequently framed through an adversarial lens. The consequences of such polarisation do not disappear merely because an administration has left office.
Since Governor Uba Sani assumed office on May 29, 2023, his administration has placed considerable emphasis on reconciliation, inclusion, interfaith understanding and the rebuilding of confidence across Kaduna’s historic divides. The governing philosophy has sought to make Kaduna a state in which citizens do not have to negotiate their belonging through ethnic or religious identity. That effort should be encouraged, not undermined.
Kaduna must not be dragged back into a politics in which every disagreement is assigned a religious colour and every institutional decision interpreted through an ethnic lens. The people deserve a political culture in which a Christian judge can preside over a case involving a Muslim defendant without his faith becoming an argument against his competence; where a Southern Kaduna indigene can determine a case involving a political figure from elsewhere without his ancestry becoming evidence of bias; and where the law is allowed to speak without the interference of primordial suspicion.
There is nothing wrong with El-Rufai challenging a judicial ruling. There is nothing wrong with seeking recusal where a defendant genuinely believes there is a likelihood of bias. There is nothing wrong with appealing an interlocutory decision with which he disagrees. These are legitimate avenues provided by law.
Indeed, the investigating body made precisely this point. It noted that many of the complaints contained in the petitions were already before the High Court through the application for recusal and before the Court of Appeal through the pending appeal. It therefore considered it inappropriate for administrative powers to be deployed in a manner that might bypass or pre-empt judicial determination. That is the proper order of things.
If the ruling is wrong, the appellate courts can correct it. If the judge is biased, the court can determine the application for recusal. If the prosecution cannot prove its allegations, El-Rufai will be acquitted. If the allegations are proved, the court will pronounce accordingly.
What is unacceptable is the attempt, deliberate or otherwise, to make the religious or ethnic identity of the judge part of the substantive argument for justice.
The independent body was equally clear about the most extraordinary allegation in El-Rufai’s personal petition: that Justice Khobo had attended several gatherings where he allegedly promised that El-Rufai would never be granted bail and would eventually be convicted. The petition said the information came from the former governor’s “network of loyalists.” Yet when the opportunity came to substantiate the allegation before the investigating body, no evidence was produced.
The larger issue is the political language surrounding the petition. Nigeria has spent decades struggling against the habit of reducing public institutions to the identities of the individuals who occupy them. The judiciary cannot function under such a burden. If judges are to be assessed primarily by their faith or ethnicity, judicial independence becomes hollow.
A judge must be presumed capable of performing his duty until evidence establishes otherwise. That presumption is particularly important in a corruption trial involving a former governor. Such a case is inherently politically charged. The defendant is a prominent former public office holder; the allegations concern the administration he once led; his supporters have political loyalties and his opponents have political grievances. The only institution capable of rising above those competing interests is the court.
It is therefore precisely at such a moment that everyone should lower the temperature rather than raise it.
El-Rufai should defend himself with the full force of the law. He should challenge every piece of evidence he considers defective, contest every proposition he considers unsustainable and appeal every decision he believes to be erroneous. But he should do so within the institutional framework created for that purpose. His present circumstances demand legal discipline, not political improvisation.
The charges against him remain allegations until determined by a competent court. That is the protection the law gives him. He should, in turn, extend the same respect to the institutions through which that protection is exercised.
Kaduna has no need for another contest between North and South, Muslim and Christian, indigenous and outsider. The state has suffered sufficiently from those artificial binaries. Its future depends on convincing its citizens that they can coexist without constantly looking over their shoulders for the next ethnic or religious provocation.
Governor Uba Sani’s administration has a responsibility to sustain that atmosphere, but so does every former leader of the state. El-Rufai, having occupied the highest political office in Kaduna for eight years, has an even greater responsibility to avoid language capable of reopening old divisions.
He should therefore resist the temptation to turn a judicial dispute into an ethnic or religious controversy. He should allow the courts to determine whether the charges against him have merit. That is where his innocence can be established if the evidence supports it; that is where the prosecution can be defeated if its case is deficient; and that is where any legitimate complaint about judicial conduct can receive a lawful remedy.
Under the able, mature, inclusive and very sober leadership of Governor Uba Sani, Kaduna, in the last three and half years, has moved beyond the primitive idea that religion and ethnicity should determine who can dispense justice. Its people must insist that it stays there.
The state belongs equally to Muslims and Christians, to Northern and Southern Kaduna, and to every ethnic community that calls it home. Its institutions must reflect that equality, and its political leaders must learn to speak to that common citizenship rather than to the fears that divide it.
El-Rufai has every right to defend himself. He has no right to make Kaduna’s old divisions part of that defence.
The former governor should therefore brace up for his day in court, meet the allegations squarely and allow justice to take its course. That would be the dignified response expected of a former governor. More importantly, it would spare Kaduna another needless journey into the dangerous politics of primordial sentiment. The state has suffered enough. It is time to let Kaduna be bigger than the divisions of its past.
•Dr. Yusuf, a university teacher, reside in Samaru, Zaria