{"id":2180,"date":"2026-04-01T12:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/?p=2180"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:37:12","slug":"el-rufai-withdraws-%e2%82%a61bn-rights-suit-against-fct-magistrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/2026\/04\/01\/el-rufai-withdraws-%e2%82%a61bn-rights-suit-against-fct-magistrate\/","title":{"rendered":"El-Rufai withdraws \u20a61bn rights suit against FCT Magistrate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has withdrawn his fundamental rights enforcement suit filed against a Chief Magistrate at the FCT Magistrate\u2019s Court in a \u20a61 billion case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Counsel to the ex-governor, Ugochukwu Nnakwu, informed Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja of the development shortly after the matter was called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The withdrawal followed an earlier observation by the court, which faulted the suit for failing to properly identify the magistrate listed as the second defendant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the resumed hearing, Nnakwu explained that although the case was slated for hearing of a motion ex parte seeking substituted service on the magistrate, a fresh motion had been filed to withdraw the suit against the second defendant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The motion, dated March 30, was filed the same day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other parties in the matter, including representatives of the police, the Attorney-General of the Federation, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, did not oppose the application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a brief ruling, Justice Abdulmalik struck out the magistrate\u2019s name from the ex parte motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following this, Nnakwu requested an adjournment to allow for amendments to the suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, proceedings in the broader case continue, with related legal issues still pending before the court.<\/p>\n\n    <div class=\"xs_social_share_widget xs_share_url after_content \t\tmain_content  wslu-style-1 wslu-share-box-shaped wslu-fill-colored wslu-none wslu-share-horizontal wslu-theme-font-no wslu-main_content\">\n\n\t\t\n        <ul>\n\t\t\t        <\/ul>\n    <\/div> \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has withdrawn his fundamental rights enforcement suit filed against a Chief Magistrate at the FCT Magistrate\u2019s Court in a \u20a61 billion case. Counsel to the ex-governor, Ugochukwu Nnakwu, informed Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja of the development shortly after the matter was called. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[696,37],"tags":[739,436,789,788,790],"class_list":["post-2180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judicial-reports","category-news","tag-against","tag-el-rufai","tag-rights","tag-suit","tag-withdraws"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2183,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions\/2183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neptuneprime.com.ng\/old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}