The immediate family members of the former Kaduna state Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai have raised the alarm after the the Department of State Services (DSS) allegedly took the former Governor into custody instead of the custody of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) as ordered by the court.
Also, the Senator representing Kaduna Central, Senator Lawal Adamu, among others on Monday protested against his detention at the headquarters of DSS.
El-Rufai’s second wife, Asia, who addressed journalists outside the DSS facility, said the family was traumatised by the development and lived daily under the shadow of threats and surveillance.
She said during the break, El-Rufai was briefly taken to the DSS facility — a move he resisted, insisting that two subsisting court orders from a Kaduna court directed that he be remanded with the ICPC.
“We now live in constant fear. Every day we get a threat — DSS is coming to raid your house, ICPC is coming to raid your house, police are coming to raid your house. You are being followed. Our phones are tapped,” Asia noted.
She recalled that el-Rufai had appeared before Justice Joyce AbdulMalik of the Federal High Court, who granted bail and stood the matter down until 1pm.
“He said to them, I am not going to step down because there are two court orders that the Kaduna court gave that I should be remanded in ICPC. Why are you bringing me here? He said, I am not a furniture to be moved,” she recounted.
Asia added that he was subsequently returned to the ICPC, but that after the afternoon session — during which the prosecution sought an adjournment and the judge fixed a resumption for the following day — he was again brought to the DSS instead of being returned to ICPC custody.
As of the time she addressed the newsmen, she said el-Rufai had refused to step out of the vehicle.
The El-Rufai first wife said: “He told them that if you want to take me inside DSS custody, you will have to physically force me into doing this, because you had an agreement.
“When Justice AbdulMalik said I should go to DSS in the first instance, we told her that there are subsisting orders. And she said, let DSS and ICPC go and decide who will keep him — and you people decided they are keeping him with ICPC. What has changed?” she queried.
Asia also disclosed that el-Rufai, who has been in custody for 91 days, had been denied access to his personal physicians in violation of a court order by Justice Aikawa of the Kaduna State High Court granting him unfettered access to his lawyers and doctors.
She explained that the ICPC’s own in-house doctor had recommended that el-Rufai run medical tests, after which it was agreed that the doctors would return to discuss the results with him. That agreement, she said, was subsequently disregarded.
“When you see a doctor and you run tests, you are expected to see the doctor back so that he explains what the problem is. He was denied access to the doctor because in their own explanation, they said Malam was not aware that the doctor was coming. I asked Malam — Malam said nobody told him.
“El-Rufai’s immediate return to ICPC custody in line with the existing court orders, restoration of his access to personal physicians, and an end to what they described as psychological torment of both the former governor and his family,” Asia added.
Also speaking, Senator representing Kaduna Central, Lawal Adamu, called for el-Rufai’s immediate release, noting that the former governor had willingly returned from Cairo to submit himself to the authorities.
“He was outside this country. He was invited by the ICPC, and he flew all the way from Cairo back to Nigeria to submit himself. We are calling for his immediate release. He deserves to be granted bail on the basis of self-recognition. What is happening is psychological harassment because of politics,” the senator said.
For El-Rufai’s son and member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Bello el-Rufai, said the entire affair was politically motivated, questioning the stringency of bail conditions that he said were deliberately designed to be impossible to meet.
“Who keeps a person for 91 days? Why were the terms of the bail so stringent that it is practically impossible for anybody to meet? Why do you have to say that Kaduna State Council of Chiefs will have to give an attestation?
“Why are we saying that it has to be a government staff of level 17, with a house in Asokoro or Maitama? Which civil servant has N100 million? What are we trying to do — are we trying to make people come out so that they can be targeted too?” he asked.
Bello accused the ICPC of issuing false statements, saying the institution had lied on at least one previous occasion and that he intended to deliver a formal petition to his colleagues in the House of Representatives over the matter.
Director General of the el-Rufai Support Group Association, Dr. Uche Dialla, described the matter as one of broader national concern, invoking United Nations conventions against psychological torture and arguing that the manner in which el-Rufai was being shuttled between agencies and courtrooms amounted to deliberate psychological harm.
“Torture is not just physical torture. When you take a man psychologically — he is in the custody of ICPC, and then he goes to court, and when there is a break you take him to another environment — that is psychological torture.
“His bag, his toothbrush is with ICPC. He is not there by choice. He was confined there by the orders of a court. Anything other than taking him back there would be deliberately torturing him,” Dialla said.