Court adjourns el-Rufai’s N1b rights suit against ICPC
Former Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s rights enforcement suit against the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and four others suffered a setback yesterday due to the inability of his lawyer to serve the respondents.
Following the raid of el-Rufai’s house, his wife, Hadiza, mocked claims by ICPC that wiretapping equipment was recovered from their Abuja residence.
She, however, accused the commission’s officials of carting away her bank tokens during the raid.
Still on the matter, five security officers, who attended to el-Rufai at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja on February 12, 2026, have been arrested for compromising their professional standards.
el-Rufai is demanding N1 billion in damages against ICPC (1st respondent); along with the Chief Magistrate at the Magistrate’s Court of the FCT, Abuja; Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), named as 2nd to 4th respondents respectively.
The matter, which was before Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja, could not proceed after it was called.
At the resumption of the hearing, only Ubong Akpan, the counsel who appeared for the ex-governor, was in court, as there was no representation for the respondents.
Akpan, therefore, informed the court that though the matter was scheduled for mention, they had been unable to serve the respondents.
He sought an adjournment to enable them to do the needful, and Justice Abdulmalik fixed March 11 for further mention.
el-Rufai, through his team of lawyers led by Oluwole Iyamu (SAN), is praying the court to declare that the search warrant issued on February 4, 2026, by the Chief Magistrate of the FCT (2nd respondent), authorising the search and seizure at his residence was invalid, null and void.
In a post on X yesterday, Mrs el-Rufai reacted to media reports quoting the ICPC as saying electronic devices capable of tapping conversations were seized during a search of their property.
“You forgot to mention that you also took away my bank tokens. I swear to God, they are not wiretapping equipment,” she wrote.
Her post quoted a Monday statement by her son, Mohammed, who represents Kaduna North Federal Constituency, describing the claims as false and politically motivated, and insisting that no “sophisticated tapping equipment” was seized during the search.
The ICPC, in filings before the FCT High Court, listed documents and electronic devices it said were recovered from the former governor’s Abuja home while urging the court to dismiss his N1 billion fundamental rights enforcement suit.
Items allegedly recovered included investor account statements, asset declaration forms, certificates of registration for business entities, corporate compliance records, client Know-Your-Customer files, documents linked to the African Democratic Congress welfare secretary, records of domestic and foreign loans approved by the Kaduna State House of Assembly from 2015 to 2023, and interim investigation reports involving el-Rufai and associates.
Electronic devices listed include nine flash drives, one memory card, seven hard drives, multiple laptops (including Apple MacBook Pro and Elumac Book Pro models), many mobile phones (Blackberry, Nokia N95, Toshiba, Samsung IDEOS, Google IDEOS), a tablet and chargers.
However, the family described the claim of wiretapping equipment as “falsehood.”
“We were present when these items were seized,” the family stated on Monday. “No equipment other than old, discarded personal mobile phones, some dating back as much as 20 years, and storage devices like flash drives and laptops, which are standard possessions of any 21st-century citizen, were removed from the property.”
el-Rufai had alleged that someone tapped the phone of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, allowing him to eavesdrop on a conversation in which the NSA allegedly ordered his arrest.
He acknowledged such an action would be illegal but claimed government agencies sometimes engage in similar practices without court orders.
The five men, who are drawn from the police, the Department of State Services (DSS), the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) and Aviation Security (AVSEC), allegedly took bribes to grant the former governor entry into restricted security areas at the airport and, by so doing, obstructed security operations in what the DSS describes as an ‘unprecedented manner’.
Giving the details of the five men, a security official said Ayuba Yakubu, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP); Mutala Inuwa, a DSS operative; Najeeb Murtala, an Assistant Superintendent of Immigration; Musa Adamu and Salihu Victor, who are all from AVSEC, all confessed to receiving bribes to facilitate the unauthorised entry into restricted areas at the NAIA on the date el-Rufai arrived from overseas.
Official statement from the security agency noted yesterday day: “At the end of a joint investigation by the DSS, NIS, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Federal Ministry of Aviation, five officers have been handed over to the ICPC for prosecution.
The statement, however, indicated that other officers from the NIS and NCS, who did not take bribes but abused their uniforms to facilitate unauthorised access, will still face administrative action.
Source: https://guardian.ng/news/court-adjourns-el-rufais-n1b-rights-suit-against-icpc/
