The Department of State Services (DSS) has re-opened the “cold case” of the 2019 disappearance, in Kaduna, of a renowned government critic, Abubakar Idris, better known as Dadiyata, and several other cases of missing persons linked to a former governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El’Rufai.
A top security source who made the disclosure, also revealed that last Thursday’s seizure of the former governor’s passport by DSS officers at the Nnamdi Azikiwe international airport, Abuja, was to stop him from fleeing to Egypt after briefly visiting Nigeria.
“El’Rufai is fully aware that the DSS is investigating him for Dadiyata’s kidnap. So, he planned to visit the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Monday, and then, visit the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Crimes Commission (ICPC) on Tuesday. Thereafter, he’ll fly back to Cairo. Seizing his passport has shattered his plans,” the source offered.
According to the security source, the reopening of Dadiyata’s kidnap case followed months of intense investigations. The leads, he said, suggested that El’Rufai, who was Kaduna State governor at the time of Dadiyata’s disappearance, masterminded the kidnap.
A lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics at the Federal University Dutsinma, Katsina State, Dadiyata was on August 1, 2019, declared missing by his wife after some gunmen abducted him in his Kaduna home. His whereabouts remain unknown.
However, speaking on ARISE Television last Friday, El’Rufai, who was governor between 2015 and 2023, disclosed that he was privy to a confession allegedly made by a certain remorseful policeman that he was part of a team sent from Kano to abduct Dadiyata.
“Three years after he was abducted, a policeman who was posted from Kano to Ekiti State confessed to someone that they were sent from Kano to abduct Dadiyata and that the officer was worried about that. That is all I know,” El-Rufai stated.
Reminded by the television anchor that Dadiyata was believed to be his critic, El’Rufai responded that he wasn’t “aware of the existence” of the missing Dadiyata. If anything, he stressed, the missing lecturer was known to be a follower of the Kwankwasiyya movement, and, therefore, a political opponent of the then Kano State governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje.
“It was Ganduje that was his (Dadiyata’s) problem. I didn’t even know him…If anybody is to be asked about the disappearance of Dadiyata, it is the Kano state government; it has nothing to do with the Kaduna state government. We didn’t even know he existed,” stated El’Rufai.
The security source stated that El-Rufai’s allegation that a certain police officer made such damning confession, and that he kept mum over such vital information, was beyond belief.
“We are talking of Dadiyata who was kidnapped in Kaduna in 2019. Assuming without conceding that such alleged confession was brought to El’Rufai knowledge ‘three years later,’ as he claimed, in 2023, when he either was still governor or had just left office.
“Don’t forget that Dadiyata’s kidnap drew tremendous international attention, with international human rights organisations like Amnesty International raising dust over the matter. Discreet investigations revealed that El’Rufai had been using ex-Governor Ganduje and the phantom police officer as alibi. It was good he repeated same on live television,” offered the source.
“It would be interesting to know what a man who had been a Hon. Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and governor of the state where the crime was known to have been committed, did with such key information,” stated the officer, adding, “even if he left office, another question is if he passed the information to his successor to any law enforcement agency?”
He added, “El’Rufai is fully aware that the DSS is investigating him and his two sons for Dadiyata’s kidnap. That was why he rushed to ARISE news channel to cook up stories about Ganduje and the confessions of a ghost police officer, all in a bid to divert attention. He is aware of the security implication of seizing his passport. He knows he can’t officially leave the country, which is very bad for him.
Several laws place a responsibility on citizens to assist with crime reporting and prevention. Section 123 of the Criminal Code Act prohibits the willful destruction or concealment of evidence, while the Criminal Code Act and the Penal Code, applicable to Kaduna State, deals with covering up treason, destroying evidence, or aiding suspects.”
The source said the secret police would also be interested in how El-Rufai’s sons contradicted his position that Dadiyata never posed a threat to his government, and that he didn’t know of his (Dadiyata’s) existence until he was reported missing.
“Former governor El’Rufai claimed that, until Dadiyata’s disappearance, he didn’t know that anybody with such name existed. However, social media posts by his sons, Bello and Bashir, suggest otherwise. Posts by his sons on “X” clearly showed that Dadiyata was a problem to the their family,” offered the officer, stressing, “that is why Bello and Bashir will be invited alongside their father to help in our investigations.”
Less than five months after Dadiyata went missing, Bashir, at about 10.16 pm on December 23, 2019, posted an interesting message on his “X” handle @BashirElrufai.
He posted, “The same clowns who encouraged him when he was creating false stories and capitalizing on lies that could endanger lives solely for political ends, are the same people trending hashtags asking #WhereisDadiyata
Doubling down on his on his younger brother’s post, Bello, now a member of the House of Representatives, on March 11, 2020, at 11.58 am, using his verified handle @B_ELRUFAI, tweeted, “The things that we’ve done to protect the name are unsettling. But no regrets, though, the name ‘ll echo. Years later, none greater. Death to a coward and a traitor, that’s just in my nature.”
On why the DSS waited this long to invite the El’Rufais, and if the invitation wouldn’t be given political colouration, the source said the secret police had spent months working in concert with sister security agencies on the matter.
“The DSS has been investigating El’Rufai’s links to the Dadiyata case for some time. The secret police have been working with the EFCC and the ICPC for over a year. Don’t forget that El’Rufai was governor for eight years. He served as FCT Minister, and faced very intense probe after his tenure as minister.
“We are not concerned with whether the man (El’Rufai) has issues with the EFCC and the ICPC. Those are issues that may bother on corruption and abuse of office. Don’t forget that in June 2024, the Kaduna State House of Assembly sent an SOS to the EFCC and ICPC to help the state recover over N423 billion allegedly stolen by El’Rufai. In this case, the DSS is concerned with those who were kidnapped allegedly on his orders,” offered the source.
“He became governor long after leaving office as minister, so knows how to cover his tracks well. You don’t expect security agencies to blow the lid off an eight-year tenure in a few weeks. We are talking of a most wily and foxy man. If you bungle an investigation on El’Rufai, you’ll have yourself to blame,” he explained.
An ICPC source, however, added that, several months after the Kaduna Assembly sent reports to the EFCC and ICPC, his office could not get some powerful fronts of the former governor who were indicted in the State Assembly report, show up for interviews in ICPC offices in Kaduna and Abuja
The source listed the case of one Kaduna-based businessman, the chairman of TMDK group, Alhaji Ahmadu Sule. “After we at the ICPC discovered that several millions of United States Dollars belonging to the Kaduna State government were transferred into TMDK Group without justification, and invited the company’s CEO, he failed to honour our invitation. We had to beg the DSS to help us arrest him.
“Despite the heavy security around the TMDK chairman, Ahmadu Sule, the DSS deployed 24-hour surveillance around him, and their operatives able to arrest him as he made to flee Nigeria to join El’Rufai in Egypt.
“Luckily for us, about two months ago, the DSS were able to help us track the TMDK boss down. El’Rufai, who had relocated to Egypt three months ago. In his interview on ARISE TV, alluded to the arrest of his business front, the TMDK chairman. What he didn’t tell Nigerians was the volume of resources deployed to nab his front,” he added.
Another security source revealed that, after successfully arresting the TMDK chairman, the ICPC and EFCC began collaborating more with the DSS on the El’Rufai case.
“While the DSS was discreetly investigating Dadiyata and other related kidnap cases linked to El’Rufai and his sons, the EFCC and ICPC extended separate invitations to the former governor in Cairo. Fortunately, after a series of back and forth with his lawyer, he agreed to return. That was our eureka moment.
“Human rights lawyer, Deji Adeyanju, was right about the DSS being only interested in seizing El’Rufai’s passport, not in arresting him. It doesn’t make sense to arrest a man who is already in your domain. If the DSS could arrest El’Rufai’s heavily guarded front, the TMDK chairman, arresting El’Rufai could never have posed a challenge,” he stressed.
The officer, however, added that, by trying to play on the sentiments of Nigerians, the former governor expected to exploit what he called “reverse psychology” to gain sympathy. He drew a parallel between El’Rufai’s drama and how the immediate past Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, responded when DSS officers accosted him at the Kuje Correctional Centre.
“In El-Rufai’s case, without a gun to his head, he went on live TV to dramatize and say, ‘I have information on what happened to Dadiyata.’ It would be sheer irresponsibility and a betrayal of our mandate to let that slide,” the source added.
He stressed, “We didn’t drug El’Rufai, neither did we bring him in chains, to go on air to claim knowledge of a crime. We work on facts and evidence before us, not on sentiments.”
Continued the officer, “There is what we call circumstantial evidence. When El’Rufai’s sons made those posts, it wasn’t enough to invite them, as they easily could have claimed, as many social media users do, that they were creating content. However, now that their father has come out clearly to say he has information that one of a police officer confessed that somebody in Kano hired him to kidnap Dadiyata, we can begin to work on the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.”
He added, “That El’Rufai moved from ‘I didn’t know Dadiyata’ to ‘he was a known critic of the Kano State government, so they must be responsible for what happened to him,’ leaves little doubt that he was trying to shift blame, a common feature crime investigators always look out for.”
Meanwhile, notable Nigerians and many others on social media, have heightened the call on security agencies to investigate the El’Rufais for Dadiyata”s disappearance.
Among those calling for the arrest of the El’Rufais are the immediate past governor of Kano State, whom El’Rufai fingered, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Omoyele Sowore, Ambassador -designate, Reno Omokri.
Also, prominent human rights activists like Prof. Chidi Odinkalu and Deji Adeyanju, as well as a former Kaduna senator, Shehu Sani, have called for his prosection for the kidnap of Dadiyata.
While Ganduje described El’Rufai’s comment as “reckless, unfounded and a clear attempt to shift responsibility for an incident that occurred entirely within Kaduna State,” Omokri insisted that El’Rufai be held accountable.
“Dadiyata was El-Rufa’i’s critic. And attached is the proof. Not just that. When he was abducted, Nasir’s son, Bashir, celebrated. If Nasir can threaten foreign election observers with death, is it Dadiyata that he can’t make disappear?” Omokri quizzed.
On his part, Sani, who represented Kaduna Central in the Senate, on his “X” handle, maintained that it was common knowledge that Dadiyata was an outspoken critic of El’Rufai. He added that the refusal of the state government under El’Rufai to officially comment on Dadiyata’s disappearance, or visit the family, smacked of complicity.
“Dadiyata was an outspoken critic of Kaduna State Government and Governor and NOT of Kano State or Ganduje. He is from Kaduna and lives in Kaduna with his family. Everyone in Kaduna knows the critical views of that young man.
“Since his abduction, there was never an official statement by the Kaduna State Government and no official visit to his family. Everyone in Kaduna was afraid to talk about Dadiyata, including the Police and the state house of Assembly. The family of Dadiyata are still around for anyone who wants to hear the truth directly from them.”
