Nasir El-Rufai, an erstwhile member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has accused the Kaduna State government led by Governor Uba Sani of masterminding the arrest of his embattled political ally, Jafaru Sani.

“Our colleague and versatile former commissioner during the El-Rufai Administration – Mallam Jafaru Sani, has been abducted in Kaduna by Uba Sani’s kidnapping gang claiming to be the police, this afternoon,” Mr El-Rufai said in a statement on Thursday.

He added, “Jafaru was remanded in prison custody by a magistrate without any police first information report or charges by the state ministry of justice.”

Describing Mr Jafar’s arrest as abduction, the former governor alleged his political ally “is being charged with money laundering – a federal offence that neither the state judiciary nor the police has jurisdiction to adjudicate or investigate.”

The former Kaduna governor linked Mr Jafaru’s arrest to the former commissioner’s resignation from the APC.

He stated, “Jafaru’s real crime is his resignation from the APC, and joining the SDP – and having been proposed by him as the replacement ministerial nominee representing Kaduna State in August 2023.”

Mr El-Rufai further expressed concern over the role of “some henpecked and compromised magistrates and high court judges in the Kaduna State judiciary”, citing the case of another political ally, Bashir Saidu, whom he said “was abducted on the 31st of December, 2024, and kept in captivity for 50 days before he was released on bail”.

Mr Jafar, a former commissioner under Mr El-Rufai’s eight-year reign as the governor, resigned from APC days after his boss defected to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) over the ruling party’s abandonment of its founding principles.

Mr El-Rufai had vowed to form alliances with other opposition parties in the country to unseat the ruling APC in 2027.