Court records allege a scheme that moved millions from National Assembly accounts into private hands. Nearly a decade later, no trial has begun, key questions remain unanswered while the case crawls through procedural delays. KEHINDE ADEGOKE reports.
THE CASE THAT KEEPS NOT HAPPENING
Nine years after senior National Assembly officials allegedly diverted ₦337,062,350 in public funds, the case remains trapped in procedural limbo.
On Monday, June 8, 2026, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) walked into the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Jikwoyi, Abuja, prepared to re-arraign three senior legislative administrators on a 23-count charge of conspiracy, forgery, criminal breach of trust, official corruption and theft.
They walked out without a single plea being taken.
What stopped them was a two-page preliminary objection filed one business day before the hearing.
Counsel to the second defendant, Muhammed Ndayako, SAN, had reportedly been aware of the re-arraignment date for over a month. He chose the eve of proceedings to move.
That sequence — the long wait, the last-minute objection, the court’s accommodation — is not incidental to this story. It is the story.
WHO ARE THESE OFFICIALS?
The three defendants occupied positions at the nerve centre of Nigeria’s legislature:
Aishatu Bappa El-Nafaty who rose to the position of Director of the Public Affairs Department in the Directorate of Special Duties and Parliamentary Security of the National Assembly. At the time of the alleged offences between 2017 and 2019, she was Deputy Director and Head of Training and Welfare for National Assembly staff — a position that gave her direct control over staff welfare funds and procurement flows.
Mamud Alhaji Abubakar was the former Permanent Secretary in the National Assembly Service — one of the most powerful administrative positions in the legislature, responsible for overseeing the institution’s entire bureaucratic and financial architecture. He retired from service approximately six months ago after reaching statutory retirement age.
Igba Ityoakura Joseph was, at the material time, serving as Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly — another position at the apex of legislative administration, with institutional authority over official documentation and financial authorisations.
Three senior officials. Three separate departments. One alleged conspiracy.
THE MONEY TRAIL: WHAT THE CHARGES REVEAL
The EFCC’s charge sheet, when read carefully, maps a specific financial architecture of alleged looting.
Count Three is perhaps the most forensically revealing. It alleges that El-Nafaty, while entrusted with dominion over National Assembly funds, orchestrated the transfer of ₦89,871,225 — nearly ₦90 million — from two specific National Assembly accounts held at SunTrust Bank Plc: the Management Overhead Account (No. 000098216) and the General Services Account (No. 000098223), into a personal account (No. 0000998281) also domiciled in SunTrust Bank, belonging to her.
This is not an allegation of diversion to shell companies or third-party proxies. The charge alleges that funds moved from institutional accounts directly into the personal account of the official managing them, in the same bank. If proven, it represents a brazen breach of public trust.
Count Ten introduces a forgery layer. El-Nafaty is alleged to have fabricated receipts from a company named Fazh Integrated Services Ltd (FISL) — documents purporting to show evidence of payments received, bearing different amounts and dates — knowing them to be false, and tendering them as genuine. This suggests a cover-paper trail was constructed to explain the outflows.
The total alleged conversion across all 23 counts is ₦337,062,350 — spanning the 2017–2019 period under at least two National Assembly administrations.
THE QUASHED COUNTS: A CASE WITHIN THE CASE
The most legally significant — and least reported — dimension of Monday’s proceedings is the argument over already-quashed counts.
Ndayako, SAN, in his preliminary objection, argued that counts 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 18 of the amended charge filed in October 2025 are legally incompetent because they attempt to resurrect counts that Justice Muhammed Zubairu himself had already struck out in a ruling delivered on May 12, 2025.
This is a serious procedural allegation. If accurate, it means the EFCC — in amending its charge months after the judge’s ruling — essentially re-inserted counts the court had already voided. Whether this constitutes prosecutorial overreach or a legitimate re-characterisation of the same facts under different legal provisions is the central question the court must now resolve in September.
What is undeniable is that the defence has now successfully weaponised this procedural dispute to delay a re-arraignment that was already coming years into the case.
THE PROSECUTION STRIKES BACK
Prosecution counsel Francis Usani did not take the ambush quietly. In open court, he accused the defence of deliberate procedural sabotage — pointing out that the defendants had been on notice of the re-arraignment for over a month following the last adjournment, yet the preliminary objection arrived in the prosecution’s hands only on Friday, June 5, 2026 — the eve of Monday’s hearing.
Usani urged the court to strike out the objection as frivolous and incompetent, designed not to raise genuine legal issues but to frustrate the re-arraignment. He pressed for the defendants to take their pleas immediately.
Justice Zubairu declined. He granted the first defendant, El-Nafaty, 48 hours to also file her own similar preliminary objection — effectively signalling that the court would hear all pending objections together — and adjourned the matter to September 23, 2026, for hearing.
NINE YEARS AND COUNTING
The alleged offences span from 2017 to 2019. It is now mid-2026. The case has not yet reached the stage of a formal plea on the current amended charge. With the September 23 date set only for hearing preliminary objections — not the objections’ resolution, and certainly not a trial — it is reasonable to project that substantive proceedings are still at minimum one to two years away, if not more.
What makes the delay particularly striking is that, throughout most of the lifespan of the allegations, the officials at the centre of the case remained within the National Assembly system. El-Nafaty continues to serve as a Director in the National Assembly administration. Joseph likewise remained in service while the allegations and prosecution process unfolded. Abubakar, the former Permanent Secretary, only left the system after retiring approximately six months ago — not as a result of any publicly disclosed disciplinary action connected to the case.
In practical terms, three senior officials accused of participating in the alleged diversion of ₦337,062,350 in public funds either remained in office or exited only through retirement while the matter wound its way through years of investigation, amendments, objections, adjournments, and procedural disputes.
None of the defendants has been convicted of any offence, and all remain entitled to the full presumption of innocence under Nigerian law. The unresolved question is why a matter involving allegations of this scale has taken nearly a decade to reach substantive adjudication.
Whether this reflects an institution’s commitment to the presumption of innocence or exposes a deeper culture of administrative impunity is a question the National Assembly itself has yet to answer publicly.
The timeline also raises questions that the EFCC, the National Assembly, and the judiciary collectively owe the Nigerian public:
Why did it take years from the alleged offences to a formal charge? The EFCC has not publicly explained when the investigation began or what triggered it.
What happened to the allegedly converted funds? Neither the charge sheet excerpts nor the EFCC’s public statements indicate whether the ₦337 million has been traced, frozen, or whether any portion has been recovered.
Why have officials facing allegations of this magnitude remained within the National Assembly system? There is no public record of suspensions, disciplinary proceedings, administrative queries, or the findings of any internal investigation connected to the allegations.
El-Nafaty remains a serving Director in the National Assembly’s Directorate of Special Duties and Parliamentary Security — a security-adjacent administrative role — while facing a 23-count criminal charge. Has the National Assembly undertaken any formal review of her continued service? No public answer has been provided.
SunTrust Bank Plc is named in the charge as the institution that hosted the allegedly diverted funds — both the originating National Assembly accounts and the personal destination account. Has the bank been called as a witness? Have its transaction records been tendered in court? These questions remain unanswered in the public domain.
Nine years after the earliest alleged offences, the public still does not know whether the money was recovered, whether anyone was held administratively accountable, or even whether the current amended charge will survive the latest procedural challenge. What is certain is that justice delayed has, so far, remained justice deferred.
FAZH INTEGRATED SERVICES LTD: THE GHOST VENDOR
Count Ten introduces a company called Fazh Integrated Services Ltd, whose receipts were allegedly forged by El-Nafaty to create a paper trail for fraudulent transactions. The EFCC charge does not say what services FISL was contracted to provide, or whether the company was a registered, active entity or a phantom vendor created specifically for this purpose.
TheDiggerNews.com notes that the name appears in two spellings within the charge itself — “Fazh Integrated Services Ltd” and “Fazah Integrated Services Ltd” — a discrepancy that may be a typographical error or may point to deliberate obfuscation in the original documents. This is a thread that warrants follow-up with the Corporate Affairs Commission registry.
WHAT NEXT
The matter returns to Justice Zubairu’s court on September 23, 2026, exclusively for a hearing on the preliminary objections filed by the defence. The prosecution is expected to file its response before that date, setting the stage for what could become the most consequential procedural ruling in the case since Justice Zubairu’s May 2025 decision striking out several counts.
TheDiggerNews.com will be monitoring three specific outcomes:
One — whether the court upholds or dismisses the defence’s argument that the EFCC improperly resurrected quashed counts in the October 2025 amended charge.
Two — whether El-Nafaty, as promised, files her own objection within the 48-hour window granted by the court, and on what grounds it differs from Ndayako’s.
Three — whether the National Assembly, as an institution, has any formal response to the continued service of a sitting Director under a 23-count criminal indictment.TheDiggerNews.com will continue to monitor developments in the case and report further proceedings as they occur.
