Why El-Rufai should be released

There are moments in a man’s life when the people who once surrounded him disappear with an alacrity more devastating than captivity itself. Power is transient; while it is yours, doors open before you arrive, when it is taken from you, even those who once stood in the doorway suddenly develop reasons to be elsewhere.

I have been thinking about this since Nasir El-Rufai was jailed. I have personally known Mallam Nasir El-Rufai since 2012, when I worked in Bayelsa as director of the Bayelsa Book & Craft Fair. My relationship with him was not without complications, nor did my opinion of him remain fixed. In fact, some of the things that happened between us forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth that, sometimes, our strongest judgments against other people are simply unfinished arguments with ourselves.

On June 25, 2025, El-Rufai wrote to me: “Professor Adebanwi is in Nigeria now. I hope to see him. I will raise the topic. He knows you better and is more familiar with the facts. Then I will return.”

He never recovered and I continued to write to him. I was desperate. I wanted to be reinstated at Oxford. I wanted, perhaps more than I was willing to admit at the time, to return to the rooms from which I had been excluded and prove something to the people who had decided I should no longer be there. When his answers stopped, I became furious. That fury eventually turned to contempt.

On June 1, 2025, El-Rufai wrote to me something that I didn’t understand well enough at the time, he said: “It’s because you were naive. If you had checked me, you would have found that I encourage, uplift and nurture the youth. I don’t put them down even when they betray me or attack me in return. I let them face the world, because sooner or later their punishment will come. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. You will. Reap whatever you sow. My position privileged is to offer others opportunities for growth, not to be belittled or degraded.

I read those words differently now because I’ve learned that there is a special loneliness associated with falling from a place of privilege. People who once called you brother start calling you “ex.” People who once needed your phone number start acting as if they never had it. The people who celebrated your victories become historians of your failures.

This is not peculiar to El-Rufai. It is the oldest tragedy of political life.

The powerful are rarely surrounded by people who love them. They are surrounded by people who find their power useful. When power disappears, distinction becomes visible.

This is why El-Rufai’s detention has become, for me, bigger than El-Rufai himself. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Crimes Commission says his detention is linked to an investigation into allegations of money laundering and abuse of office and that his pre-trial detention has been authorized by the courts. El-Rufai’s legal team contested the detention and requested bail. The facts put forward by his legal team should be admitted in the interests of justice and fairness

But there is another fact that cannot simply be ignored: Nigerian politics is entering another election cycle, and El-Rufai is no longer simply a former governor watching events from the sidelines. He was associated with an opposition political group, the African Democratic Congress. In July 2026, ADC spokesperson Bolaji Abdullahi publicly stated that the federal government intended to keep El-Rufai in detention until after the 2027 elections, arguing that his continued detention could weaken the opposition. This is the opposition’s claim, not an established judicial finding.

Yet it raises the question that Nigerian politics must honestly answer: where do the legal proceedings end and the political consequences begin?

A government has the right and, indeed, the obligation to investigate allegations of corruption. A former governor is not entitled to immunity because he once held the office.

But the same democratic system that allows for investigations must also protect due process, fair trial and the presumption of innocence, as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Justice cannot become an instrument of political revenge, nor can political popularity become a shield against accountability. This is where my story with El-Rufai becomes important.

I know what it means to feel that a powerful institution has decided that your existence within it has become uncomfortable. I know what it’s like to see relationships evaporate after a dispute. My personal experience around Oxford and Cambridge, including the controversy that followed my association with David Hundeyin, taught me how quickly academic prestige can turn into public contempt.

I have my own interpretation of what happened. I believe the controversy over Hundeyin’s journalism and his documentary work on Bola Tinubu was intertwined with the treatment of those associated with him. But this remains my interpretation, not a fact I can responsibly impose on the reader. Public reports state that Oxford and Cambridge have severed their relationship with me and Hundeyin following investigations into our conduct.

What mattered to me was not simply losing an institutional association. It was about finding out who was missing. That’s why El-Rufai’s incarceration forced me to reconsider the man I once despised. I had cheered his detention and now I regret that impulse.

There is something morally impoverished about celebrating a man’s suffering simply because one has suffered because of him. If I believe that institutions should not destroy people because they have become inconvenient, I cannot abandon that principle just because the person in front of me is someone I once considered an adversary.

This is what politics teaches us when we are old enough to see beyond the theater of victory and defeat. Today’s jailer could become tomorrow’s prisoner. Today’s prisoner may once have held the keys to the prison, and the people who applauded both transformations may simply be waiting to find out where power will shift next.

I also learned that political loyalty is often conditional. El-Rufai worked very hard for the political project that eventually brought Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the presidency. Today, however, the relationship between men who once occupied the same political universe is interpreted through the harder mathematics of succession, opposition and the 2027 election.

Some believe Tinubu fears the political influence El-Rufai could wield outside the ruling establishment. Others view the detention entirely through the prism of the corruption allegations the ICPC is investigating. There is no responsible reason to merge these conflicting explanations into a single certainty, but the political tension is undeniable and palpable.

El-Rufai is influential. The ADC itself presented his continued detention as politically motivated. At the same time, the government maintains that this is a legitimate investigation and that the courts have authorized the detention.

The response, therefore, cannot be based on animosity. It must be founded in law. If there is evidence against El-Rufai, let it be presented in court. Let him answer. Let the courts determine his guilt or innocence. If the law allows bail, let the courts consider bail according to the same principles that should govern every Nigerian, regardless of his political affiliation.

And if continued detention is legally necessary, let the government explain its necessity through proper legal process rather than through the whisper mechanism of political speculation.

I say this not because I suddenly became a disciple of El-Rufai. I say this because I feel uncomfortable with how easily we celebrate the incarceration of people we don’t like. I have been that person; I watched from afar and took satisfaction in another man’s misfortune.

Today I understand differently. Maybe El-Rufai was right when he told me that life is a marathon, not a sprint. We may indeed reap what we sow. But if this is true, then justice must not become revenge. The State must not become the wounded man’s fist of perdition, and power must not become the prison in which yesterday’s allies hold each other until tomorrow’s elections have passed.

Therefore today I look at El-Rufai differently. Not like the man who didn’t reply to my text. Not like the politician whose silence once infuriated me. Not even like the mighty man whose fall once gave me pleasure. I see a Nigerian citizen caught in the intersection of law, power, political rivalry and history, and I ask only what I once wanted for myself when the doors of Oxford seemed closed to me.

Let’s hear the facts. Let the law take its course, and let no man’s political utility or political uselessness determine the extent of his freedom.

Nwelue is an acclaimed writer whose next novel is based on el-Rufai.