Kaduna – Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai has filed a lawsuit against the Kaduna State Assembly, challenging the constitutionality of its investigative report.
The suit, lodged in the Kaduna State High Court, contends that the Assembly’s report is “unconstitutional, null, and void” on the grounds that it violated El-Rufai’s right to a fair hearing.
El-Rufai’s legal team has based their argument on provisions in the Nigerian Constitution that guarantee the right to a fair hearing.
The former governor has criticized the Assembly for failing to extend an invitation to him during their investigation, a move he argues is a fundamental breach of justice. “It is very strange and difficult to understand that a whole body responsible for making laws in a state and populated with 34 members will be oblivious of a common position as simple as ‘Fair hearing’,” El-Rufai stated.
The Assembly’s report, which implicated El-Rufai in the alleged misappropriation or diversion of N432 billion, has been the subject of considerable controversy. According to El-Rufai, the Assembly only heard from second and third parties, deliberately avoiding his direct testimony.
“How can you lay claim to your investigation and pronunciations as a yeoman’s job when all you did was hearing from second and third parties and deliberately avoided the person you are investigating?” he questioned.
El-Rufai further criticized the Assembly’s findings and their subsequent actions, which included passing a judgment of guilt without allowing him the opportunity to defend himself. “Your ‘yeoman’s findings’ didn’t stop there; you then went ahead to pass a judgment of guilt and culpability to implicate, indict, and cast aspersion on the name and image of the person you REFUSED to invite to have his day in your ‘investigation’. Where is fairness and justice in this equation?” he argued.
The former governor suggested that the Assembly’s actions were not due to ignorance but were a deliberate decision by the leadership. “Personally, I do not think the assembly is oblivious of the fact that you can’t shave a person’s hair in absentia or are unaware of the implications of not giving a person the right to fair hearing. They’re very much in tune, and the reason invitations were extended to a number of persons and companies. But as to why the prime actor (El-Rufai) was not invited, the answer rests squarely with the Speaker who set up the investigative committee and the Chairman of the investigative panel,” he said.
Now that El-Rufai has taken legal action, the responsibility to explain this oversight falls on the Assembly. If it is established in court that El-Rufai was not invited to participate in the investigation, his claims of being denied a fair hearing could be upheld. This would potentially render the Assembly’s report null and void.
It is worth noting that nearly a month has passed since the Kaduna State Assembly recommended further investigation into El-Rufai’s tenure over the alleged financial misappropriation. Despite these recommendations and public pressure, including protests by a civil society organization, the state government has yet to act.
As the legal battle unfolds, the court’s decision will be pivotal in determining the validity of the Assembly’s report and the future of the allegations against El-Rufai.
