Senator (Dr.) Muhammad Adamu Aliero

Senator (Dr.) Muhammad Adamu Aliero is one of the most enduring political figures of Nigeria's North-West, with a public career spanning the Third Republic (NRC Governor of Kebbi, 1992-93), the Fourth Republic (APP/ANPP Governor of Kebbi 1999-2007, FCT Minister 2008-2010 under President Yar'Adua, and Senator for Kebbi Central across 2007-08, 2011-2019 and 2019-2023). Across that arc he has been the subject of repeated, but never fully prosecuted, corruption allegations — most prominently the N10.2 billion contract-fraud arc first documented by Daily Trust. According to that reporting, between December 2006 and August 2008 the EFCC and ICPC received three formal petitions from Kebbi indigenes Alhaji Abubakar Kane, Alhaji Sani Dododo and Alhaji Shuaibu Y. Mungadi alleging phantom contracts and suspicious cash movements from Kebbi local-government accounts during his 1999-2007 governorship. On 30/31 July 2008, Justice Adamu Bello of the Federal High Court Abuja — acting on an ex-parte order-of-mandamus application by Alhaji Sani Dododo — summoned the EFCC, ICPC AND Aliero himself to explain why the agencies had not investigated the petitions. The mandamus suit, and parallel appeals, ultimately failed, and the federal anti-graft agencies under Farida Waziri (and later under Ibrahim Lamorde) declined to prosecute. Frustrated by federal inaction, in 2010 the Kebbi State Government under Governor Saidu Dakingari engaged Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN — then a private practitioner and later President Buhari's Attorney-General of the Federation (2015-2023) — to prefer a 30-count fraud charge against Aliero and eight others at the Kebbi State High Court, Birnin Kebbi (filed via state ADPP Bagudu U. Abubakar). That state charge was never arraigned to a meaningful stage and lapsed amid the subsequent realignment of Kebbi politics. The dossier was revived publicly on 11 June 2015 by Alhaji Al-Mustapha Haruna Jokolo, the 19th Emir of Gwandu, who wrote a reminder petition to ICPC urging prosecution; Jokolo himself had been controversially deposed by Aliero on 3 June 2005, a deposition later declared unlawful by the Kebbi High Court (2014), Court of Appeal (April 2016, reaffirmed October 2024) and ultimately reversed on procedural grounds by a 3-2 Supreme Court split in June 2025. In April 2022 a fresh strand emerged: the ICPC's Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Group, in a report on diversion of zonal-intervention funds, accused Senator Aliero of using 'subtle influence' to award constituency-project contracts (notably the supply of 686 water-pumping machines to Kebbi Central) to companies owned by his biological children — naming Voltricity Nigeria Limited, Alliance Trading Co. Ltd, Hummingbird Projects and Services International Ltd and Puranova Nigeria Limited. ICPC operatives sealed off premises in Kebbi where over a thousand undistributed pumps were warehoused. Aliero has consistently denied wrongdoing, dismissing the petitions as politically motivated, telling reporters that 'people, including senators, suffer in the hands of the commission as a result of false petitions' and his camp characterising the N10.2bn dossier as the product of PDP opponents. No formal arraignment meeting prosecutorial floor has occurred on any of the four matters; status therefore remains 'alleged'. The case carries notable historical irony: the lawyer who drafted the 2010 30-count Kebbi state charge against Aliero — Abubakar Malami SAN — would, as AGF (2015-2023), preside over an anti-corruption portfolio that itself faced extensive scrutiny (and Malami was himself arraigned on 16-count money-laundering charges in December 2025).