Nigeria’s Presidency has advised former President Atiku Abubakar to retire from Politics and go back to Dubai.
The advice, contained in a post by Presidential Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, came on the heels of the long-expected defection of the Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri to the All Progressives Congress, APC, from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Atiku, former Vice President under the PDP, former APC chieftain, back to PDP and then to the African Democratic Congress, ADC, where he is aspiring, again, to the Nigerian Presidency, is from Adamawa State.
But on Thursday, Fintiri, who was always seen, until recently, as Atiku’s political godson, defected to the APC with members of his cabinet (minus one of Atiku’s sons), Local Government Chairmen and Councillors as well as the State Executive Council of the PDP.
Given the situation which not a few people say has left Atiku’s flank open, and without a political base, the
Presidency has mocked him by telling him to retire from politics and go back to his second home, Dubai.
Onanuga to Atiku in the post on Friday: “Adamawa Governor Fintiri joins the APC taking away Atiku’s entire home base to President Tinubu’s party. This is a big blow for Atiku.
“With the presidential election less than a year away, Fintiri’s defection is surely a big blow to veteran presidential runner Atiku Abubakar.
“His ADC is largely unknown in the state. He certainly needs to reassess his ambition, as his governor has turned the APC into an Adamawa juggernaut.
“If a politician is not so popular at home, he has no business selling his candidacy to outsiders. The time is nigh for Atiku to consider retiring from politics and going to his second home in Dubai.”
Prior to Fintiri’s defection, the Speaker and members of the Adamawa House of Assembly, had a couple of days earlier, dumped the PDP for the APC.
Dele Momodu, a two -time presidential aspirant, and a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, has expressed surprise that under President Bola Tinubu’s watch, the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has practically taken over Nigeria’s Capital Territory, and is exercising powers that not even Vice President Kashim Shettima will exercise.
He criticised Tinubu for not restraining Wike pointed out that the powers Wike flaunts, not even the Vice President flaunts them.
Momodu, an accomplished Magazine Publisher-turned politician, made this statement while criticizing President Tinubu’s public commendation of Wike following the recent FCT Council Election.
That commendation irked Momodu who described it as disappointing. He argued that Wike’s conduct during the election raised serious concerns about democracy.
Nyesom Wike
Momodu who spoke on News Central TV said he was, at once, ashamed and shocked as he watched the President applauding Wike.
He remembered Nigeria’s struggle against military dictatorship and wondered why a civilian administration would allow what Momodu described as “authoritarian tendencies” to flourish.
Said he: “Replacing military rule with civilian dictatorship contradicts the sacrifices made during the pro-democracy movement.
“Wike wields enormous influence in Abuja and maintains strong links within security agencies, giving him access to intelligence briefings.
“Such access should remain strictly professional and not translate into overt political involvement,” Momodu said.
Minister Wike, Momodu accused, intimidates political opponents and acts in a manner that creates fear among governors and the electorate.
Momodu said Wike operates like “a de facto Vice President” in the FCT, and is tolerated by the President because he perceives Wike could offer him electoral advantages ahead of the 2027 general election.
He said: “The Vice President cannot do what Wike is doing in Abuja, and Tinubu is watching. Why? Because he needs Wike next year for his own election. So you unleash him on the nation.
“But I know that whenever this would end, as it will surely end one day, the President will look back, and he will regret what he has done to our democracy. Because this is not what we promised Nigerians when we were fighting the military. It’s unfortunate.”
The South-south Zone of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, has said it would back former Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi for the Presidential ticket of the Party.
This was disclosed by Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, a former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, but now a chieftain of the ADC, during a meeting of the stakeholders held at his home in Benin, Edo State, during which he said Amaechi has formally briefed them of his intentions.
John Odigie-Oyegun
At the meeting, Odigie-Oyegun announced Amaechi’s endorsement by the ADC South-South political leaders for the presidential ticket in the 2027 general elections.
He said: “In the process, we are glad that our son, His Excellency, Chibuike Amaechi, took advantage of this meeting to brief us formally of his intention to run for the presidency of our great nation.”
He commended Amaechi for what he described as respect for regional leadership and political consultation before launching his ambition.
“We were very pleased to thank him for the respect he has for the leaders of the zone; for not letting loose in his zone, setting up his own personal structure, by ensuring, like any good son, that he tells his people what he has in mind before he embarks on it.”
The leaders, he said, have reached a unanimous decision to support Amaechi’s presidential bid.
“We were pleased, and I can report, that a unanimous decision was taken to give him all the support that he needs in pursuit of his ambition”, he stated.
He chided the South-South-South Governors for emphasising that they would deliver the Zone to President Bola Tinubu, and described it as insulting to the people who voted them in, but who, they now feel can no longer think or decide for themselves who to vote for or not.
Odigie-Oyegun, also, revealed that they will hold regular meetings with the aim of strengthening collaboration among political stakeholders in the South-South Zone.
.
Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar
He said: “We are going to meet regularly. This group of leaders are going to meet regularly to interact and to learn from each other’s experience, so that, as usual, the South South zone will become an example to be emulated by other zones in the nation. That reflects basically in this decision”
He, also, hammered on the need for peaceful political activities in the run-up to the 2027 elections, and urged the authorities and stakeholders to promote stability and avoid violence.
He said: “A lot of speakers, of course, emphasized the fact that we hope the government will approach the run-up to the elections and allow peace to reign, allow stability to reign, and eschew violence in the run-up to the elections that will come in 2027.”
Members of the ADC, he agreed, are conscious of the short time they have before the elections and are committed to their political objectives.
“We are very aware that time is short, and we, as the ADC, are committed”, he said.
Senator Albert Bassey has been sentenced to a seven year imprisonment by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
The former Senator whose sentencing by the lower Courts was affirmed by the Supreme Court on Friday, February 27, 2026, will, also return to the Akwa Ibom State Government, the sum of N204 millions.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in a statement, said the sentencing was decided by a five-man panel of Justices and delivered by the Honourable Justice Stephen Jonah Adah.
The Supreme Court, in its review of the case, affirmed the judgement of the Appeal Court, and restored the restitution of N204m imposed by the High Court but ignored by the Appeal Court.
Said the Supreme Court: “The order of this Court is that the conviction and sentencing imposed by the lower court on the 23 day of June 2023 on the appellant is hereby affirmed but the order of the lower Court avoiding the order of restitution given by the trial Court did not follow the law, so it is revised and the right order is to nullify same and thereby the restitution of the sum of N204 million made by the trial Court is restored.”
Trouble started for the former Senator when the EFCC, in a case led by its Counsel, Ekele Iheanacho, SAN, before the Honourable Justice Agatha Okeke of the Federal High Court, Uyo, prosecuted him. He was said to have received bribes of 12 cars which worth was put at N254 million while he was the Commissioner for Finance, Akwa Ibom State.
The Court found him guilty of all the seven-count charges preferred against him and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment for each charge on December 1, 2022. The years of imprisonment totalled 42 years but ran concurrently.
But, not satisfied, Bassey proceeded to the Court of Appeal where a three-man panel upheld his conviction but with an option of fine. It is that judgment that the Supreme Court looked at and not only upheld the seven-year jail term but restored the N204m restitution to the Akwa Ibom Government.
Bassey represented Akwa Ibom North East in the 8th Senate, and was the State Commissioner for Finance from 2007 to 2014.
Legal “Star Boy” and Senior Lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, was, on Friday, told by an Abuja Federal High Court to perfect his bail terms by Monday or be remanded in prison custody.
Ozekhome was arraigned Friday by the Federal Government over an alleged complicity in a web of fraud perpetrated in a complicated string of crimes which ain was to claim ownership of a disputed United Kingdom property.
With a team of 91 Lawyers lined up in his defence, Ozekhome pleaded not guilty to the allegations in a 12-count charge read to him.
The Honourable Justice Chizoba Orji of a Federal Capital Territory High Court, Maitama, is in charge.
Docked with him is Ponfa Useni (Tali Shani), a son of late General Jeremiah Useni (Rtd), a former Minister of the FCT whose name is central to the alleged property fraud which borders on forgery and abetment of an offence.
Sometime in 2020, the Federal Government alleges, Ozekhome agreed with Ponfa Useni and the late General Useni to commit an illegal act by making a false Nigerian International Passport No. A07535463 with the name Tali Shani.
The defendants allegedly claimed that the forged passport was issued by the Nigerian Immigration Service “with the intent of using the same to support your claim of a property, lying, being, and situate at No. 79 Randall Avenue, London NW2, United Kingdom, and you thereby committed an offence contrary to section 96 of the Penal Code Law 2009 and punishable under section 364 of the same Law.”
Part of the charge alleged that Ozekhome (1st defendant) “abetted the commission of an offence of cheating by personation when he jointly executed an irrevocable power of attorney dated May 30, 2020, with one Tali Shani, “a fictitious person,” to facilitate the claim of the UK property, and thereby committed an offence contrary to sections 83, 84, 321 of the Penal Code Law, 2009, and punishable under section 322 of the same Law.
Count 9 of the charge alleged that Ozekhome took control of the UK property, which is reasonably suspected to have been unlawfully obtained by General Jeremiah Useni (now deceased) under the fictitious name Tali Shani while in Count 10, he was alleged to have, within the period, collected the sum of £18,000 as rent that accrued from the property.
Useni, who was said to have falsely personated a fictitious person (Tali Shani), was cited as the 2nd defendant in the charge signed by the Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, SAN.
The defendants pleaded not guilty of the allegations, and the prosecution counsel, Oyedepo, SAN, applied for a trial date.
But Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, Counsel to Ozekhome and that of his co-defendant, S.R. Onoja, SAN, pleaded for their release on bail. The application was not opposed by the prosecution.
Oyetibo, in his plea, informed the court that his client has always made himself available to anti-graft agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), pointing out that Ozekhome’s international passport was already in the custody of the EFCC.
He said: “He has nowhere to run. The EFCC and ICPC granted him bail on self-recognition, and he will not leave Nigeria.”
Counsel to the second defendant, Onoja, SAN, also prayed the court to grant bail, noting his client’s heart condition and the administrative bail previously granted by the EFCC on liberal terms.
Justice Orji granted the defendants bail in the sum of N10 million each, with a surety each in the like sum and emphasised that the sureties must be owners of landed property within the FCT. He, also, ordered the defendants to surrender their international passports and not travel outside the country without clearance.
Justice Orji allowed the defendants to go home since the Court proceedings took place on a Friday. But she asked them to return on Monday to perfect the bail terms failing which they would be remanded in prison custody.
Oyedepo, prosecuting counsel raised complained about the unprecedented number of defence lawyers and urged that it be streamlined.
The trial was adjourned to March 13, April 15, and April 16, 2026.
Tinubu in do-or-die 2nd term bid: First, it is perverse for an incumbent to seek to shutdown an entire system; the very same that ensconced him onto power. It’s like sequestering yourself in a house with doors and windows tightly shut! The very open system which brought a man to power, he now seeks to shut it down in order to eliminate any form of contest or opposition.
This scenario is what President Bola Tinubu has fully pre-occupied himself with since he came to power in May, 2023.
Shutdown the space! Pull down their bastions and hack their stanchions! This seems to be the silent battle cry of Tinubu and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The tactics as they unfolded are seemingly threefold, thus: infiltrate all opposition parties (LP, PDP, etc) and make them dysfunctional; hound key opposition figures (Abubakar Mahmood, Aminu Tambuwal and Nasir el Rufai) using anti-graft agencies and thirdly, control the electoral body.
All of these dark strategies apparently hatched for sweeping the 2027 general elections have been activated and operationalised. Though President Tinubu would never win a second term in a free and fair poll, the process seems technically afore-rigged. 2027 is therefore, seemingly settled in Tinubu’s favour unless a catastrophe, like a tsunami occurs.
ENTER THE HEGEMONS: But there’s a little snag somewhere in the mix. In tightening the screws on the 2027 election ‘Heistmobile’; in hunting down the big opponents, two Hegemons are now locked in a fight to death.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and Mallam Nasir el Rufai are currently locked in a death duel of their own. President Tinubu’s second term having been secured and done with (or so it seems) and the south’s tenure out of the way, the contest has shifted to who becomes the next president of Nigeria from the north in 2031. Ribadu and el Rufai are already the major aspirants and they are locking horns like two crazed bulls. This column is of the opinion that unless the twain strike a compromise, one may have to take out the other to have his way.
THE WAY OF HEGEMONS: Both Ribadu and RUFAI are at once, scions and beneficiaries of Nigeria’s hegemonic north. Who remembers when Nigeria was controlled by a mythical ‘Kaduna Mafia’! Or the influence of the Barewa College Old Boys in leadership selection and succession in Nigeria? Of course the cunning British coloniser at independence, left a political structure that ensured that Nigeria was kept under a northern hegemony. This means that the north would perpetually dominate and enjoy an undue advantage over the south in the affairs of the country.
From a skewed arrangement at independence in 1960 to the military era which ended in 1999, the north held the country in thrall. It has the first pick of the fattest cut and even determines who gets what in the federating units.
Though their influence has waned over the years, the duo of Ribadu and Rufai are the last of northern hegemons and their sense of entitlement to Aso Rock come 2031 will keep Nigeria spellbound in the coming years.
Author: Steve Osuji
NUHU RIBADU, son of a prominent politician in the first Republic is a shining star of the north. Educated, connected and inordinately ambitious.
He holds a masters degree in Law from Ahmadu Bello University and thereafter enrolled in the Nigeria Police rising to the position of Assistant Inspector General of Police.
A key highlight of his career was his appointment by President Olusegun Obasanjo as the pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
He led the anti-graft body creditably well, making much impact as a pioneer.
But his vaulting political ambitions soon got the better of him. He got into bed with the rogue politicians he had earlier indicated, embarking on a frenzied pursuit of political power.
He has contested in every election since 2011, starting with presidency and several guber attempts. He lost woefully each time!
Today, Ribadu is the de facto number two man in Nigeria today sitting on the powerful position of National Security Adviser, NSA.
A master of the art of power and influence, Ribadu has held the position well, rendering unto it, much gravitas and awesome aura. He captured the seat, so to speak and got the ear of the president from the word go.
While he lacked the capacity to fight the raging insecurity, he has leveraged on the sad situation and now makes great capital of the incipient US collaboration.
He has probably amassed huge wealth, but his greatest personal reckoning may well be his ability to keep out his once chummy, now mortal enemy from the current power loop.
NASIR EL RUFAI, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State was once a great pal of Nuhu Ribadu’s. When Ribadu held sway as EFCC chairman and Rufai was the czar of the federal capital territory, Abuja as presiding minister, the twain were like the biblical David and Jonathan.
Rufai who studied Surveying and Estate Management was an honours student also at the Ahmadu Bello University.
He set up practice in Lagos and was consultant to the military government both under the dictator Sani Abacha and the transformation government of Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar.
When President Obasanjo was ushered in in 1999, Rufai along with Ribadu, were among the haymakers of the administration for eight years.
They were not just the shining stars of the Obasanjo administration, they were the emerging northern stars.
RIBADU-RUFAI DUEL BEGINS:
It wasn’t public knowledge when the duo fell out or what was the crux of the matter but the highpoint came in 2023 after president Tinubu was sworn in. Whilst Rufai was the architect of the ticket and subsequent presidential victory, Ribadu had Tinubu’s ears as well as his security network. It was also his duty to screen appointees. Thus it was that Rufai was screened out and never made Tinubu’s cabinet.
Slighted and denigrated, he left the ruling APC and joined the coalition of opposition under the aegis of Africa Democratic Congress, ADC. He has continued to look back in anger since then. First, he told the world that Obi won the 2023 presidential election and not Tinubu and the APC.
He has vowed that President Tinubu would fall. He knows the plot, he has boasted. He said his old pal Ribadu ensured he didn’t make the Tinubu cabinet and accused him of plotting for 2031 presidency. In fact, he hasn’t stopped talking.
No doubt, both Ribadu and the presidency haven’t been sleeping easy with Rufai a loose cannon out there.
Probably wealthier than half a dozen African states out together, brilliant and wily, if Rufai is not in your political corner, he had better be sequestered in a lonely corner.
This is what Ribadu and the APC has finally achieved a few days ago.
Rufai was caught up by his unwarranted bravura and loquaciousness. By one careless talk about taping the phone of the NSA, he fell into the ‘enemy’ trap. He was pulled in and tossed between two anti-graft agencies and the Department of State Service (DSS).
Today, the irrepressible en fant terrible has been put away till April in the first instance. He will probably be slammed on a long jail term unless he cuts a deal. He also has the capacity to fight very dirty.
Tinubu and the APC are no doubt jittery. As they close the space and hound the opposition, a national backlash may ensue.
In summary, President Tinubu and his APC may be under the illusion that they have routed the opposition and closed the democratic space completely. But APC has under-performed and public opinion is tilted against the incumbent.
The auguries are dark and 2027 remains uncertain.
LAST LINES: BY-ELECTIONS, INEC’S POOR OUTING: If the last by-elections in Abuja and Rivers State are a testament of what to come, there’s indeed real fear over the 2027 general elections.
INEC’S chairman Professor Joash Amupitan’s first outing was signposted by mutilated result sheets, ballot box snatching and even death.
This was just local council election and the results as pronounced, leave much to be desired.
The mandatory transmission canvassed by Nigerians but sabotaged by the legislature could not be applied by the INEC. The election turned out shambolic.
Result: Nigerians are already braced for the worst as 2027 approaches.
My mother used to warn me that the words of my mouth could claim my head if I weren’t careful. She should have saved that warning for another man: Nasir El-Rufai, former minister and governor of Kaduna State. I’ve often joked that even if you beheaded El-Rufai and minced his skull, his tongue would still be wagging. Those who have been in his crosshairs might agree.
He once said even if President Muhammadu Buhari were hit on the head with a Blackberry phone, the former president might still not know the difference between the phone and a blackberry fruit.
His rhetoric against Vice President Atiku Abubakar was no less brutal. He accused the former vice president of playing “SIM-card politics,” describing Abubakar as a serial defector and a born-again saint who forgot his own past confessions.
If his mouth could kill him, the former governor would have been dead many times. His tongue almost trapped him during President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s administration, but he managed to escape; yet, even in exile, he would not be silenced.
Talking up a storm
He may have talked himself into trouble again – this time, claiming publicly that he tapped the phone of his old friend and National Security Adviser Malam Nuhu Ribadu, and that the former Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje, may know something about the missing social commentator, Abubakar Idris, famously known as Dadiyata.
When Ribadu emerged as the Action Congress (a legacy party of the APC) presidential candidate in 2011, El-Rufai said Ribadu was a paperweight, but the two later patched things up. What triggered the recent spate of loose talk for which El-Rufai is now standing trial for a crime? It began at what was supposed to be his moment of reward for backing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s election to office in 2023.
Against public expectation, the Senate declined to confirm El-Rufai as minister, a process many had assumed would be a mere formality. On the campaign trail in 2023 in Kaduna, the president, then a sure-footed candidate, had summoned El-Rufai on stage and extracted, on live television and captured on camera, a promise to join the incoming government. The nominee was a consummate bureaucrat with a reputation for getting things done.
The screening humiliation
Rather than the “take-a-bow-and-go” that many expected at the Senate, El-Rufai was publicly humiliated with a yet-to-be-declared security report, quashing a ministerial appointment he had not lobbied for and which the President had made an offer and practically compelled an acceptance.
That incident was the starting point of a political arm-wrestling match between El-Rufai and the Tinubu administration. The controversy has dragged on like a dead weight, and El-Rufai has obviously resolved to fight – foul or fair.
It’s a self-inflicted wound that the government has handled rather poorly. There are many things for which you could hang El-Rufai by the next pole – his brutal rhetoric, his presumptuousness, his arrogant pride, and, of course, his suppression of dissent and his calamitous mishandling of ethno-religious relations, especially between Christians and Muslims, when he was governor of Kaduna State.
Nasir El-Rufai
A man like El-Rufai
Yet, in a country of rampantly incompetent public officers, El-Rufai is as competent a technocrat as they come. Warts and all, he towers above his peers in courage, clarity of vision, performance and delivery. And in the twilight of the Buhari government, when powerful cabals hijacked it, he took risks that only a few could dare.
APC hawks in the presidential villa frantically strategised to undermine an obviously fed-up Buhari, who confessed that he looked forward to the day he would have to quit the presidency.
They plotted to secure a consensus presidential candidate for the party in disregard of the unwritten code of power rotation between the North and the South, and their choice was far from Tinubu. With a streak of devilish genius, they hatched a plan to redesign the currency in 2023, primarily targeting Tinubu.
Couched as a measure to control campaign spending, the politics behind the currency redesign policy was thinly disguised. It turned out to be part of a grand scheme, a political vendetta, and a self-serving agenda by those who wanted to rig the political competition and eliminate the leading contender (read Tinubu) before the whistle blew.
Very unpopular for the acute financial distress it imposed on citizens and the killing blow it dealt to small businesses, the currency crisis became a needless government war against citizens. At the same time, the political class, who were supposed to be the targets, found convenient ways to short-circuit or bypass the scheme altogether.
Moment of crisis
It was El-Rufai who rallied other governors – in a queer alliance that included himself, Bello Matawalle of Zamfara and Yahaya Bello of Kogi State – all APC governors, against an APC central government. They went to the Supreme Court and obtained a landmark pronouncement that opened glimpses into the vistas and possibilities that true federalism in practice actually represents. But this is a matter for another day.
The Supreme Court declared the currency redesign policy unconstitutional for failing to consult bodies such as the National Council of States and the Federal Executive Council. It invalidated the CBN’s deadlines, nullifying the policy as an affront to the constitution and a breach of citizens’ rights amid economic hardships.
With the court ruling, El-Rufai and his obstinate brother governors were on solid ground. He defied the CBN and addressed his people in Kaduna State, making it an official policy in Kaduna – against the federal government’s position that the old currencies remained legal tender.
Loud mouth, lone voice
He was the loudest, almost lone voice against high-wired manipulations to take the presidency and the party hostage. His resilience and determination at every stage outsmarted those who had no reservations in trading national stability for personal interest.
If, as it has been said elsewhere, El-Rufai did this because he had a strategic long-term agenda, that is not a crime. There were many people around candidate Tinubu at the time who had their personal agenda and yet did terribly bad things to undermine his candidacy.
The shabby treatment he received at the Senate confirmation was bad enough; freezing him out in the cold after that public humiliation was unfair and unwise. He is fighting back, and even though he doesn’t mind sticking his tongue in a trap to get attention, he would wag it to exact an inconvenient political price from the government.
Distraction Tinubu doesn’t need
Tinubu doesn’t need the distraction. Not because he needs El-Rufai to help him win a second term, but because trashing the former governor, despite his valuable contributions to the party and the president’s electoral success, prioritises politics over competence and charity.
The stark choice facing the government is either to drop the charges against El-Rufai immediately or to let them drag on and fester, reopening old wounds. Whatever choice Tinubu makes, this avoidable situation has just given El-Rufai more oxygen, precisely what he wants, handed on a platter.
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.
For the third time in less three months, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Friday February 27, 2026, rearraigned former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, Wife, and son before an Abuja Federal High Court.
The anti-graft Commission arraigned the defendants before the Honourable Justice Joyce Abdul-Malik ,on an amended 16-count charge bordering on alleged diversion of public funds, money laundering and abuse of public office to the tune of over N8.7billion.
The arraignment before the new Judge followed the sudden withdrawal of the immediate past trial Judge, Honourable Justice Obiora Egwuatu, who, on February 12, 2026, recused himself from the case citing personal considerations as a major reason.
Before him, however, vacation Judge, Honourable Justice Emeka Nwite, had, on January, 7, 2026, granted Malami, his wife Asabe Bashir, and son, Abdulaziz bail to the tune of N500 million each , with two sureties in like sum.
At the resumed hearing on Friday , prosecution counsel Jibrin Okutepa SAN informed the court that the business of the day was for the rearraigment of the defendants ,the case file having been reassigned to a new Judge.
“The matter is coming before Your Lordship this morning for the very first time, and I will be applying for the plea of the defendants to be taken”, Okutepa stated .
The prosecution counsel also applied to effect a slight correction in the amount listed in counts 11 and 12 ,to read N325 million , instead of N325 billion, and N120 million, instead of N120 billion respectively.
The amendment application was subsequently granted, having not been opposed by the defence counsel Joseph Daudu, SAN .
The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A new application for bail will,however, be filed and the defendants are to remain in jail until it is heard, and if granted, perfected.
As the 2027 General Election gathers momentum, Bode George, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, stalwart and former Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, has sternly warned the ruling Party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, against engaging in electoral malpractice ahead of the 2027 general elections.
He gave the warning on Friday during the inauguration of New PDP Executives in Lagos State. He alleged that the ruling party was pushing Nigerians to the brink by plotting to rig the 2027 polls.
George cautioned the Joash Amupitan-led INEC to exercise fairness and transparency, stressing that the Commission lacks constitutional authority to impose leaders on political parties.
“In PDP, INEC cannot choose our leaders for us. Opposition parties will resist this irresponsible behaviour from the electoral umpire,” he said.
He criticised the conduct of a recent election, describing it as shambolic and mismanaged.
He alleged that security agents disrupted voting at a polling unit in Abuja by firing tear gas and snatching ballot boxes.
“This is shameful and despicable,” he said.
The retired Navy Commodore assured members of a renewed PDP, stressing that anti-democratic elements within the APC would not be allowed to undermine the opposition.
“Our governors and lawmakers are being forced and threatened to defect, but we are not bothered because PDP is the only true national party in the country today. APC is just a coalition of strange bedfellows,” he said.
He contrasted PDP’s internal processes with those of the APC, arguing that the opposition party conducted its ward, council, state congresses, and national convention transparently.
George urged party members to remain steadfast despite ongoing challenges, describing them as temporary.
“Nigerians are waiting for us in 2027. Remain in the party and work for its progress. If APC thinks it can repeat the same in 2027, Nigerians will shock them,” he said.
The Ondo State Police Command has ordered stoppage of night programmes in religious worship centres in view of surge in kidnappings in the state.
The order was as a result of abductions of some worshippers at a Celestial church in Owo local government during a night vigil.
The state commissioner of police, Adebowale Lawal, gave the advice on Friday in Akure, the state capital, while addressing the journalists on the recent surge in Banditry in the state.
The Uso Church victims were kidnapped on February 25 during a midnight service at the church located along the Uso/Owo Expressway in the Owo Local Government Area of the state.
Mr Lawal explained that all the victims were pregnant women and one physically challenged person.
One of the worshipers was rescued, and one informant was arrested by the police after the incident.
It was gathered that the kidnappers had demanded N100 million ransom before the victims could be released.
The commissioner said it would be easier for the police to monitor religious activities during the day than at night.
“On the issue of ransom, nobody has come forward to speak officially about ransom payments.
“And we have always advised religious leaders, if they want to do anything, they should carry us along so we can give expert advice on whether it is safe for their congregation.
“In the recent case, nobody informed us about any activity taking place there. I do not know when a church became a maternity home or hospital.
” If someone is pregnant, the best place should be a hospital or maternity home.
“However, we sent a signal to all area commanders advising religious leaders—Muslim, Christian, and traditional worshippers—to suspend night worship for now because of the security challenges,” he said
