Today marks two hundred and forty-six days since Mallam Nasir El-Rufai voluntarily surrendered himself to an investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and subsequently the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, on February 18, 2026, a detention that has now stretched through nearly eight months of a man who committed no crime other than refusing to kneel. A lot of people, supporters and even enemies alike, have registered their frustration at a spectacle that has long ceased to resemble justice and has become something closer to a political hostage situation. The campaign is about to start, and the paper tigers know it, which is precisely why the cage has not been opened.
They thought the cage would silence him. They thought the chains would make the people forget. They were wrong. A caged lion is still a lion but more dangerous. The roar does not die because the mouth is behind bars. It echoes louder. It travels farther. It wakes up those who were sleeping. And in Kaduna, across the North, and through every corner of this country where people still believe that leadership is about service and not about swallowing the commonwealth, the people are waking up. They are watching. They are remembering. And they are angry.
Let us be clear. The detention of Nasir El-Rufai is no longer a legal matter. It has become a political circus, and the clowns are not even pretending anymore. A former senator allegedly stood in Zaria and begged the governor to keep El-Rufai locked up until after the 2027 election, until the governor receives his crown, and only then should the lion be released. Read that again. A public figure, in broad daylight, at a political gathering, openly linking the continued detention of a former governor to the electoral ambitions of the incumbent. This is not justice. This is not the rule of law. This is fear wearing the mask of legality. And the mask is slipping.
Who are these people demanding that El-Rufai remain caged? Their records speak louder than any label. They are the ones who have never won anything on their own. They are the political tourists who attach themselves to whoever holds the microphone and the purse then betray them and find another host to leech again. They could not win a ward councillorship without standing on another man’s structure. They have no history of political triumph in and of themselves. And now, terrified that the lion might walk out of the cage and remind the people of what real leadership looks like, they are begging for the detention to continue. Paper tigers. That is what they are. Paper tigers roaring at a lion behind bars because they know that if the bars were removed, they would scatter like leaves in a storm.
Their fear is understandable. El-Rufai’s greatest strength was never in the Government House. It was never in the ministerial chambers. It was never in the boardroom of the APC or the corridors of power. His greatest strength is the people. Not just in Kaduna, though Kaduna knows him best. Across Nigeria, there are people who remember a man who spoke truth to power when it was dangerous. Who stood against the naira redesign policy not because it hurt his party’s chances, but because he saw ordinary Nigerians suffering at the ATM queues, unable to buy food, unable to transport themselves to work. He said it plainly, without fear of the cabal in Aso Rock: the president made a mistake. How many of those now calling him a criminal had the courage to say that? Not one. They were too busy calculating how to position themselves for the next round of appointments.
Ask the vital question. If El-Rufai had chosen to side with the oppressors, would he be in detention today? If he had kept quiet about the naira policy, if he had smiled and nodded while the cabal tightened the noose around the economy, if he had kept his head down and his mouth shut, would the ICPC be filing charges against him? The answer is obvious. The moment he stopped being useful to the machine, the machine turned on him. They mock him now, saying he is fighting the government because he was not appointed minister. But how does that logic survive the facts? He accepted the ministerial nomination. He submitted himself to the process. And he was betrayed during the screening, not because he lacked the credentials, but because they feared his influence. They feared a man who could not be controlled, a man whose voice would echo too loudly in the cabinet, a man who would ask questions they did not want to answer. So they blocked him. And then they turned around and said he was angry because he was not appointed. The betrayal came first. The detention came after. And those who now say he is attacking the government because he was not appointed minister should be asked where they were when he stood against Buhari’s cabal during the naira redesign policy. Where were they when he called the president’s policy a mistake to his face, knowing it would cost him? They were nowhere. They were silent. They were calculating. They cannot stand against injustice when it favours them, and that is why they cannot understand a man who stood against injustice even when it cost him everything. Their accusation is not an argument. It is a confession of their own shallow mindset.
And here is the bitter irony that should make every fair-minded Nigerian pause. Most of the people who now demand that Atiku Abubakar respect zoning and allow the South to complete its turn are the same people who benefited from El-Rufai’s championship of that very principle.
When Northern governors insisted that power must shift to the South after Buhari, El-Rufai was at the forefront. He said it clearly: we felt that eight years after Buhari, power should go to the South. He helped build the structure that brought the current government to power. And what did they pay him with? Detention. Betrayal. A cage. When El-Rufai did for the South what they are now begging Atiku to do, they rewarded him with chains. Let that sink in.
They also ask, with straight faces, whether Nigeria began in 1999. No, it did not. Nigeria began in 1960 but in 1966, when a group of southern military officers toppled the First Republic they refused to write the zoning clause into the junta’s manual. It took decades of Northern military mismanagement and abuse of every principle known to humanity and endless struggles, and eventually the 1999 transition, to include zoning in the political arrangement. And what did the South do with that advantage? Obasanjo abused it with his third-term agenda, trying to elongate himself beyond the constitutional limit.
Jonathan, a southerner, reneged on the zoning understanding that would have returned power to the North, and the same people now shouting zoning supported him then. Principles do not become sacred only when they favour your side. If zoning was right for Jonathan, it is right for Atiku. If it was wrong then, it is wrong now. El-Rufai stood for zoning when it cost him nothing politically and when it aligned with his convictions. These people stand for zoning only when it benefits their ambitions.
The people must not be fooled. The arrests will not stop with El-Rufai. More will come before the election. They will pick off one voice after another, hoping to create a silence so heavy that the people forget they have the power. But they cannot arrest everyone. They cannot cage a whole state. They cannot lock up the millions who hold voter cards and memories.
They can arrest a governor, a senator, a former official or even a sarcastic author. They cannot arrest the market woman in Kaduna who remembers when her children could go to school without fear. They cannot arrest the farmer in Zaria who knows what it means to have a leader who built roads and hospitals instead of buying properties in Dubai. They cannot arrest the youth in Kafanchan who has seen what governance looks like when it is driven by ideas rather than looting.
And that is why the people must resist. Resist the intimidation. Resist the threats. Resist the temptation of rice and noodles and bread, though if hunger is the weapon being used against you, take the food they offer and use the energy to sweep them out. There is no shame in eating the rice of the oppressor if the same hand that stole from you then feeds you crumbs is the hand you will vote out. Collect the rice. Collect the noodles.
Collect the bread. You will need the energy on election day. But do not indulge in violence. Do not let them bait you into chaos, because chaos is their plan. The APC will do anything to postpone the election, to create a state of emergency, to find an excuse to remain in power without facing the voters. Violence is the excuse they are praying for. Do not give it to them. Stay peaceful. Stay focused. Stay organized. Mobilize your neighbours.
Educate your community on how to vote and how to protect the vote. On the final day, come out in numbers so large that no rigging machine can swallow them. Send them packing with your ballot, not your fist.
Look around you and ask what this government has actually delivered. A former senator turned blogger whose only achievement is sharing transistor radios on camera. Ministers whose only visible success is accumulating properties abroad while their people wallow in poverty under the shackles of bandits and terrorists. Appointees who have turned public funds into private estates while the roads in their own constituencies remain death traps. These are the people who want to keep El-Rufai in a cage. These are the paper tigers. They have no record to run on, so they are running on fear. They are afraid of a man who refused to be subdued. A man who refused to be silenced by betrayals and backstabbing. A man who, even from behind bars, commands more loyalty and respect than they will ever earn in a lifetime of sycophancy.
The lion is caged, but the lion is not dead. The people are not dead. The votes are not dead. The anger is not dead. On election day, let the cage be opened by the ballot. Let the roar be heard in every polling unit. Avenge the treatment of El-Rufai with your votes. Refuse to be intimidated. Refuse to be bought. Refuse to be divided. The paper tigers are terrified because they know that when the people speak, the cage becomes irrelevant. The lion walks free. And the paper burns. Go out and do it for MALLAM NASIR EL-RUFAI. Bissalam
By Mohammed Bello Doka.
He can be reached via [email protected]
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