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By Onyeka Nwelue
There are moments in a man’s life when the people who once surrounded him disappear with an alacrity that is more devastating than imprisonment 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 the incarceration of Nasir El-Rufai. I have known Mallam Nasir El-Rufai personally since 2012, when I was working in Bayelsa as the Director of the Bayelsa Book & Craft Fair. My relationship with him has not been without complications, nor has my opinion of him remained fixed. In fact, some of the things that have happened between us have forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth that sometimes, our strongest judgments against other people are merely unfinished arguments with ourselves.
On June 25, 2025, El-Rufai wrote to me: “Prof. Adebanwi is in Nigeria now. I hope to see him. I will raise your subject. He knows you better and more familiar with the facts. I will revert then.”
He never reverted 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 that I should no longer be there. When his responses stopped, I became furious. That fury eventually became contempt.
On June 1, 2025, El-Rufai wrote something to me that I did not sufficiently understand at the time, he said, “It is because you were naïve. If you had checked me out, you would have found that I encourage, uplift and nurture young people. I don’t put them down even when they betray or attack me in return. I let them face the world, as their punishment will happen sooner or later. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. You will reap whatever you sow. My privileged position is that of providing opportunities for others to grow, not to be diminished or degraded.”
I read those words differently now because I have learnt that there is a special loneliness attached to falling from a place of privilege. People who once called you brother begin calling you “former”. People who once needed your telephone number start acting as though they never had it. 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 the power disappears, the distinction becomes visible.
That is why El-Rufai’s detention has become, for me, larger than El-Rufai himself. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission says his detention is connected to an investigation into allegations of money laundering and abuse of office, and that his remand was authorized by the courts. El-Rufai’s legal team has challenged the detention and sought bail. Those facts adduced by his legal team should be allowed to stand in the interest of justice and fairness
But there is another fact that cannot simply be dismissed: Nigerian politics is entering another electoral cycle, and El-Rufai is no longer merely a former governor watching events from the sidelines. He has become associated with an opposition political formation, the African Democratic Congress. In July 2026, ADC spokesman Bolaji Abdullahi publicly alleged that the Federal Government intended to keep El-Rufai in detention until after the 2027 election, arguing that his continued detention could weaken the opposition. That is the allegation of the opposition, not an established judicial finding.
And yet it raises the question that Nigerian politics must answer honestly: Where does prosecution end and political consequence 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 occupied office. But the same democratic system that permits investigation must also protect due process, fair hearing and the presumption of innocence as enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Justice cannot become an instrument of political vendetta neither can political popularity become a shield against accountability. This is where my own history 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 inconvenient. I know what it means to watch relationships evaporate after controversy. My own experience surrounding Oxford and Cambridge, including the controversy that followed my association with David Hundeyin, taught me how quickly academic prestige can turn into public opprobrium.
I have my own interpretation of what happened. I believe that the controversy surrounding Hundeyin’s journalism and his documentary work concerning Bola Tinubu became entangled with the treatment of those associated with him. But that remains my interpretation, not a fact I can responsibly impose upon the reader. Public reporting records that Oxford and Cambridge terminated their associations with me and Hundeyin following investigations into our conduct.
What mattered to me was not merely losing an institutional association. It was discovering who disappeared. That is why El-Rufai’s imprisonment has forced me to reconsider the man I once despised. I had gloated over his detention and I now regret that impulse.
There is something morally impoverished about celebrating the suffering of a man simply because one has suffered at his hands. If I believe that institutions should not destroy people because they have become inconvenient, I cannot abandon that principle merely because the person before me is someone I once considered an adversary.
This is what politics teaches us when we are old enough to see beyond the theatre of victory and defeat. Today’s jailer may 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 discover where power will move next.
I have also learnt that political loyalty is frequently conditional. El-Rufai worked tremendously 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 being interpreted through the harsher mathematics of succession, opposition and the 2027 election.
Some believe Tinubu fears the political influence El-Rufai could wield outside the ruling establishment. Others see the detention entirely through the prism of the corruption allegations being investigated by the ICPC. There is no responsible reason to conflate these competing explanations into one certainty but the political tension is undeniable and palpable
El-Rufai is influential. The ADC itself has presented his continued detention as politically motivated. At the same time, the government maintains that the matter is a lawful investigation and that the courts have authorized the detention. The answer, therefore, cannot be founded in animosity. It must be founded in law. If there is evidence against El-Rufai, let it be presented in court. Let him answer it. Let the courts determine his guilt or innocence. If the law permits bail, let the courts consider bail according to the same principles that ought to govern every Nigerian, regardless of political affiliation.
And if continued detention is legally necessary, let the Government explain its necessity through the proper legal process rather than through the whispering machinery of political speculation.
I say this not because I have suddenly become El-Rufai’s disciple. I say it because I have become uncomfortable with the ease with which we celebrate the imprisonment of people we dislike. I have been that person; I have watched from a distance and felt satisfaction at 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 might indeed really reap what we sow. But if that is true, then justice must not become vengeance. The state must not become the wounded man’s fist of perdition, and power must not become the prison in which yesterday’s allies keep one another until tomorrow’s election has passed.
I therefore look at El-Rufai differently today. Not as the man who failed to return my message. Not as the politician whose silence once enraged me. Not even as the powerful man whose downfall once gave me pleasure. I see a Nigerian citizen caught at the intersection of law, power, political rivalry and history, and I ask only for the thing I once wanted for myself when the doors of Oxford seemed closed to me.
Let the facts be heard. Let the law take its course, and let no man’s political usefulness or political uselessness determine the measure of his liberty.
Quote: “But there is another fact that cannot simply be dismissed: Nigerian politics is entering another electoral cycle, and El-Rufai is no longer merely a former governor watching events from the sidelines. He has become associated with an opposition political formation, the African Democratic Congress.”
