Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has approached a Federal High Court seeking ₦1 billion in damages against the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and three other respondents, challenging what his legal team describes as an unconstitutional invasion of his Abuja residence carried out under a fundamentally defective search warrant.
The suit, filed on February 20, 2025, comes one day after ICPC operatives and officers of the Nigeria Police Force stormed El-Rufai’s residence at House 12, Mambilla Street, Aso Drive, Abuja, on February 19 at approximately 2 p.m., armed with a search warrant reportedly issued on February 4 by the Chief Magistrate of the Magistrate’s Court of the Federal Capital Territory.
The former governor is represented by a legal team led by Oluwole Iyamu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Named as respondents in the originating motion on notice are the ICPC as 1st respondent, the Chief Magistrate of the FCT Magistrate’s Court, Abuja Magisterial District as 2nd respondent, the Inspector-General of Police as 3rd respondent, and the Attorney-General of the Federation as 4th respondent.
El-Rufai is pressing seven specific reliefs before the court. Central to his case is a prayer for a declaration that the search warrant which authorised the February 19 raid is invalid, null, and void. His lawyers argue that the warrant is afflicted by multiple and fundamental defects — including lack of particularity, material typographical errors, ambiguity in execution parameters, overbreadth, and an absence of probable cause — all of which, they contend, render it unconstitutional under Section 37 of the Nigerian Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy.
Beyond seeking the invalidation of the warrant, the former governor is also asking the court to declare that the raid itself amounted to a gross violation of his fundamental rights under Sections 34, 35, 36, and 37 of the Constitution — rights covering the dignity of the human person, personal liberty, fair hearing, and privacy respectively.
A third prayer seeks a judicial declaration that any evidence obtained during the search is inadmissible in any proceedings against him, having been obtained in breach of constitutional safeguards. Alongside this, El-Rufai is requesting an injunction restraining the ICPC and the Inspector-General of Police from relying on, using, or tendering any evidence or items seized during what his lawyers have characterised as an unlawful search.
He is further requesting a court order compelling the ICPC and the Inspector-General to return all items seized from his premises, accompanied by a detailed inventory of everything taken.
The financial relief sought totals ₦1 billion, broken down as follows: ₦300 million as compensatory damages for psychological trauma, emotional distress, and loss of personal security; ₦400 million as exemplary damages, intended to deter future misconduct by law enforcement agencies; and ₦300 million as aggravated damages for what the applicant’s legal team describes as the malicious, high-handed, and oppressive nature of the respondents’ actions, including the use of a patently defective warrant procured through misleading representations. An additional ₦100 million is sought as the cost of filing the suit, covering legal fees and associated expenses.
In his legal submissions, Iyamu laid out a detailed constitutional and statutory argument against the validity of the search warrant. He anchored his case on Sections 143 to 148 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015, and Section 36 of the ICPC Act, 2000.
Iyamu argued that Section 143 of the ACJA requires that an application for a search warrant be supported by information submitted in writing and on oath, setting forth reasonable grounds for suspicion. According to him, this requirement was not met in the instant case, as evidenced by what he described as an incomplete initiating clause in the warrant.
He further submitted that Section 144 of the same Act mandates that a warrant contain particular descriptions of both the place to be searched and the specific items sought, as a safeguard against the issuance of general warrants — a practice long condemned in both Nigerian and international jurisprudence. The warrant in question, he argued, vaguely referred only to “the thing aforesaid” without any further detail, making it fatally imprecise.
Addressing Section 146, Iyamu contended that a search warrant must be in a prescribed form and free from defects that could mislead its executors or those subject to it, yet the document presented on February 19 was, in his submission, “riddled with errors in the address, date, and district designation.” He said that while Section 147 permits a warrant to be directed at specified persons, the warrant in this case indiscriminately addressed “all officers,” which he described as overbroad and unaccountable. On Section 148, which permits execution at reasonable times, Iyamu argued that contradictory language in the warrant created ambiguity that undermined procedural clarity.
To support his admissibility argument, Iyamu cited the case of *C.O.P. v. Omoh* (1969) NCLR 137, in which the court held that evidence procured through improper means contravenes fundamental rights and must be excluded. He also cited *Fawehinmi v. IGP* (2000) 7 NWLR (Pt. 665) 481, in which the court condemned vague warrants as affording unbridled discretion to enforcement officers and creating conditions ripe for abuse.
Mohammed Shaba, described as a Principal Secretary to the former governor, deposed to the affidavit in support of the application. Shaba stated that on the afternoon of February 19, officers from both the ICPC and the Nigeria Police Force arrived at El-Rufai’s Mambilla Street residence and proceeded to execute what they presented as a search warrant.
According to Shaba, the officers failed to submit themselves for search as required by law before proceeding. He further averred that the Magistrate who issued the warrant did not specify the magisterial district in which he sits, a procedural requirement that forms part of the warrant’s validity.
Shaba stated that during the operation, officers searched the premises without lawful authority, seized personal items including documents and electronic devices, and in so doing “caused the applicant undue humiliation, psychological trauma, and distress.” He added that none of the seized items have since been returned, and that the respondents continue to rely on what his principal’s legal team regards as unlawfully obtained evidence.
A list of the items seized during the search was attached to the court papers and marked as “Exhibit B.”
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai served as Governor of Kaduna State for two terms, from 2015 to 2023, under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Before his time as governor, he served as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory under President Olusegun Obasanjo from 2003 to 2007, a tenure that brought him considerable national prominence — and persistent controversy — particularly over mass demolitions in Abuja and the privatisation of public housing.
El-Rufai has long been one of Nigeria’s most polarising political figures. Celebrated in many quarters as a reformist technocrat with a capacity for bold policy decisions, he has equally faced persistent allegations of high-handedness, ethnic bias in governance, and abuse of state power during his years in Kaduna — allegations he has consistently denied.
His governorship ended in May 2023 amid significant tension. In September 2023, El-Rufai publicly resigned from the APC, citing what he described as a systematic betrayal of the party’s founding ideals and grievances over his political marginalisation under the administration of President Bola Tinubu, who assumed office in May of that year. The resignation marked a dramatic rupture between El-Rufai and the federal power structure, setting the stage for a period of heightened political and legal friction.
The ICPC, established by the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act of 2000, is Nigeria’s primary anti-corruption agency tasked with the investigation and prosecution of corruption offences involving public officers and institutions. The commission has in recent years expanded the scope of its operations to include post-tenure scrutiny of former state governors and federal officials, operating in a sometimes uneasy parallel with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The raid on El-Rufai’s residence is the most dramatic public escalation of whatever investigation or inquiry the ICPC may be conducting in relation to the former governor. The commission has not, as of the time of this report, issued a detailed public statement laying out the basis for the search or the nature of the items it sought to recover.
The suit raises questions that go well beyond the immediate political circumstances of El-Rufai’s case. At its core, the legal challenge engages a long-running debate in Nigerian jurisprudence and civil society about the standards to which law enforcement agencies must be held when exercising the power of search and seizure — a power that, if poorly regulated, can be deployed selectively and abusively against political targets.
The ACJA, which came into force in 2015 after years of advocacy by legal reform groups, was specifically designed to cure many of the procedural deficiencies that had long plagued Nigeria’s criminal justice system, including the issuance of loosely worded and overbroad warrants. The argument that the warrant used in this case failed to meet the ACJA’s minimum requirements — if sustained by the court — would represent a significant rebuke to the practices of both the issuing magistrate and the ICPC.
Nigerian courts have, over the decades, developed a body of jurisprudence that is broadly protective of the right to privacy and hostile to general warrants, drawing both on constitutional provisions and on common law principles inherited from the British legal tradition. However, the consistent application of these principles has remained uneven, particularly in cases involving high-profile political or security interests.
How the court rules on El-Rufai’s application and particularly on whether evidence seized under a defective warrant should be declared inadmissible could have implications for future enforcement operations and for the question of how magistrates exercise their warrant-issuing powers.
The matter has been filed and is awaiting assignment and hearing dates. The respondents have not yet filed their responses to the originating motion.
