By Sunday Stephen
Security was tightened across Kaduna on Tuesday as former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was arraigned before a Federal High Court over alleged money laundering and corruption offences.
El-Rufai, who spent 33 days in detention before his court appearance, was brought before the court by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on a 10-count charge marked FHC\/KD\/73\/2026.
According to the charge sheet dated March 18, 2026, the ICPC accused the former governor of unlawfully receiving a total of about \u20a6579 million as severance allowance\u2014far exceeding the legally approved sum of roughly \u20a620 million.
One of the charges stated that El-Rufai, in September 2020, allegedly took possession of \u20a6289,826,998.12 as severance allowance above his legitimate entitlement\u2014funds he was said to have reasonably known were proceeds of corruption.
A similar allegation was made for January 2023, where he was accused of receiving the same amount under comparable circumstances.
The commission further alleged that El-Rufai received multiple foreign currency deposits into his Guaranty Trust Bank domiciliary account from different individuals.
In one of the counts, the ICPC said he controlled a total of $320,800 between September 2017 and March 2023\u2014funds allegedly linked to corrupt activities.
Other charges claimed he received $155,800 from Peter Akagu Jones and $305,300 from Ajayi Ayodele, alongside smaller sums of $5,000, $4,000, and $10,000 from individuals said to be at large.
In count five, the ICPC alleged that in May 2022, El-Rufai took possession of $305,300, which he ought to have known formed part of proceeds of unlawful acts.
Count 10 further accused him of conspiring with Joel Adoga in July 2019 in Abuja to conceal the origin of $10,000 deposited into his account.
All offences are said to contravene provisions of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
The ICPC had earlier announced its readiness to arraign El-Rufai and Adoga, while also disclosing a separate case before a Kaduna State High Court involving allegations of abuse of office and fraud against the former governor and one Amadu Sule.
The commission noted that both cases were filed on March 18, 2026, adding that El-Rufai had been duly served, with a date for the state court arraignment to be communicated later.
El-Rufai\u2019s legal troubles stem from ongoing investigations into his tenure as governor from 2015 to 2023. He had earlier honoured an invitation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on February 16 over alleged financial improprieties.
In 2024, the Kaduna State House of Assembly indicted him over the alleged diversion of \u20a6423 billion in public funds and recommended a full-scale probe.
Although he was initially granted bail after two nights in EFCC custody, he was later re-arrested, with a Federal High Court in Abuja ruling that his bail application was premature pending formal arraignment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sunday StephenSecurity was tightened across Kaduna on Tuesday as former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was arraigned before a Federal High Court over alleged money laundering and corruption offences.El-Rufai, who spent 33 days in detention before his court appearance, was brought before the court by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4435,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4434\/revisions\/4435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontlinenewsng.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}