‘Punishment Before Trial’ – El-Rufai’s Wife Decries 150-Day Detention

Asia Ahmad El-Rufai, wife of former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai has appealed to the international community to intervene in what she described as the prolonged detention and denial of due process for her husband.

Lawyer Asia had contended that the continued incarceration of the former governor was tantamount to “punishment before trial” and was a threat to Nigeria’s democratic institutions.

Asia, in a public statement, marking what she described as the 150th day of El-Rufai’s detention, urged foreign governments, multilateral organisations and international human rights groups to closely monitor the legal proceedings involving her husband.

She said it not as a political actor but as a wife and mother seeking justice for a member of her family.

Asia said the duration of the alleged detention had taken a heavy emotional and physical toll on El-Rufai and members of his family.

On the 150th day of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s detention, I call on readers beyond Nigeria to consider what that number signifies. One hundred and fifty days is not a term of art.

“It is five months of missed meals, missed prayers, missed proper mourning of his deceased mother, missed family conversations, interrupted medical care and moments we can never get back,” she said.

Asia admitted that her husband had been a controversial figure during his more than two decades in public service.

El-Rufai was director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, minister of the Federal Capital Territory and governor of Kaduna state.

“My husband is used to controversy and being in the public eye. He has been praised, damned, loved and hated. That’s democracy.

But what is happening to him today is not democracy, nor accountability. “It’s punishment prior to trial,” she said.

Asia said the ordeal started when security officials tried to stop her husband at an airport, took his passport without a warrant and attacked one of his aides.

She said El-Rufai later voluntarily honoured an invitation from the authorities but was detained despite assurances that he would be granted bail.

The invitation that came out of the blue, his willing presence before the authorities, the bail that existed on paper but not in freedom.

“There was the night he was transferred from one place to another without warning and without the dignity of his family knowing where he was going,” she said.

Asia also alleged that the former governor was seriously ill in custody, and bleeding from the nose and mouth.

Officials, she said, had refused to give him proper medical care or to let his family bring him medication that had been prescribed for him.

I am still haunted by the helplessness I felt when I learned that he had become seriously ill in custody, bleeding from his nose and mouth, and those charged with his care were reluctant to provide the care any person deserves.

“I remember the stress of trying to get him his medication and the officials approving it,” she said.

“The detention has caused emotional distress to the family who are still waiting for the legal process to take its course,” she said.

“These are not theoretical breaches, “They are the moments that erode a family’s will and hope,” she said.

Asia made clear that she was not asking that her husband be put above the law, and stressed that former public officials should be investigated if there were credible allegations.

But she said that it was important that such investigations were carried out in a transparent way and in line with constitutional safeguards.

If the state thinks it has evidence, let it be presented openly and fairly before an impartial court.

But justice is not discriminating. “It cannot be prosecuted in overlapping charges, repeated detentions, impossible bail conditions and public humiliations to convince the nation of guilt before a judge has heard the case,” she said.

The lawyer said authorities seemed to be using various charges and proceedings in various courts to hold her husband in detention.

She also alleged that Nigeria was moving away from legitimate accountability to “lawfare,” which she defined as the use of legal institutions and judicial processes as political weapons.

“The question is not whether you can investigate former officials. They can and should be.

The worry is whether the law is applied neutrally or turned against those who have lost political favour, she said.

Asia blamed her husband’s predicament on his falling out with the administration of President Bola Tinubu and his exit from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

She said his political differences with the government should not lead to indefinite detention or persecution through prosecution.

“His political break with President Bola Tinubu’s ruling All Progressives Congress and his refusal to submit his independent voice should not make him a target for indefinite punishment or detention disguised as prosecution,” she said.

Asia called the legal process confusing, saying the cases involved overlapping allegations, changing legal arguments and duplicate claims based on the same incidents.

“The legal architecture around him is baffling even to trained lawyers: multiple counts in different courts, overlapping accusations, changing statutory theories and duplicative claims based on the same alleged acts.

If an application for bail is made and the conditions are met, another charge can be filed the next day. “If one judge has to look at freedom, another process can be used to delay it,” she said.

She said such procedures had turned the judicial process into a kind of punishment before conviction.

“This is the way the judicial process turns into premeditated punishment. “This is how we have arrived at 150 days of wrongful detention,” she added.

Asia said that the ill-treatment was not only confined to her husband alone but also involved some of his associates including Joel Adoga, Jimi Lawal and Professor Abubakar Bello.

Adoga, a former public servant and family breadwinner, she said, was subjected to long detention, including some one month in solitary confinement.

She also said Lawal’s health had deteriorated significantly in custody.

Asia also cited the reported arrest and detention of Bello on July 7, who she said was El-Rufai’s personal physician. Asia said he was placed under stiff bail conditions.

“These men are loved family members and citizens of Nigeria. These guys aren’t files. Their families are not collateral damage to be ignored for a political vendetta,” she added.

Asia appealed to the diplomatic and development partners of Nigeria to take the allegations surrounding the detention of her husband seriously and not to turn a blind eye,

She said countries and organisations that supported Nigeria’s democratic institutions, security agencies, anti-corruption bodies and development programmes had an interest in ensuring that such institutions respected human rights and due process.

“ A country cannot gain international support while using so-called democratic institutions to wipe out opposing political voices,” she said.

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She called on diplomatic missions, international organisations and human rights advocates to demand transparent trials, humane detention conditions and immediate access to medical treatment.

Asia also urged them to make sure anti-corruption enforcement was not used as a political tool for retaliation.

Asia directly appealed to President Tinubu to allow the courts to deal with the case of her husband fairly and independently.

“To President Tinubu, I say this with respect and with sorrow: history is seldom kind to leaders who wield power to harm the innocent to silence the inconvenient.

She said: “A strong government has nothing to fear from a strong critic.”

She called for El-Rufai to be granted access to his lawyers, medical personnel and family while facing any credible allegations against him.

“If there are credible accusations against my husband let him respond to the accusations with access to his legal team, his doctors and his family. She added, “Let the evidence be heard in the court and not through orchestrated leaks of falsehood.

But Asia believed the matter was more than her husband’s personal situation and raised broader questions of judicial independence and equality before the law.

“Nigeria’s friends need to understand that this case is bigger than Nasir El-Rufai. It is about whether a citizen can fall out with power and still be protected by the law.

“It’s about whether courts are places of justice or theatres of intimidation,” she said.

She said she was not asking the international community to decide her husband’s innocence but to support the democratic principles of fairness, due process, humane treatment and equality before the law.