My two cents on the apparent travails of Nasir El-Rufai: I think he has a personal strategy to remain in detention. Maybe he figures he will do more strategic damage to Tinubu by staying in custody — that the emotional weight of what is undoubtedly a weaponization of justice keeps him unjustly immobilized, and that this serves him better than freedom would. Or perhaps he simply calculates that he is safer in jail than out of it. Even his political profile might benefit more from jail: the myth of his invincibility in the North stays intact, never put to the test.
I say El-Rufai is not being as strategic as he could be, because all he has to do is appeal the terms of his bail — first to the Court of Appeal, and then, if needed, to the Supreme Court. By now, that appeal might already have been decided. It is fairly safe to predict that the Court of Appeal would not uphold such obnoxious bail terms, which defy reason and effectively reward conduct that the Code of Conduct for Public Officers presumes corrupt unless proven otherwise.
Under that Code, any public officer who holds personal property in Asokoro or Maitama — property not allocated by government and not paid for through means the government provided — is presumed to have acquired it corruptly, since official pay alone cannot justify it, until the officer proves otherwise. That is nearly impossible to do, short of inheritance.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
