Alhaji Mukhtar Ramalan Yero

Alhaji Mukhtar Ramalan Yero is a former PDP Governor of Kaduna State who served from December 2012 to May 2015, having succeeded the late Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa following Yakowa's death in a Nigerian Navy helicopter crash on 15 December 2012. Yero, previously Deputy Governor and a former state Commissioner for Finance, completed Yakowa's term but was decisively defeated at the 2015 governorship election by Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai of the APC, ending PDP's hold on Kaduna. Yero's post-office career has been overshadowed by an enduring Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) prosecution arising from the so-called 'Diezani 2015 election slush fund' investigations. The EFCC alleges that, in the run-up to the March-April 2015 general elections, former Minister of Petroleum Resources Diezani Alison-Madueke channelled the sum of N700 million (with a further N115 million tranche also referenced in earlier filings) to PDP operatives in Kaduna State to influence the outcome of the presidential election in favour of then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan. Yero was first arraigned in 2018 alongside three co-defendants — Nuhu Somo Wya (a former Minister of State), Hamza Ishaq, also rendered as Ishaq Hamsa (a former Secretary to the Kaduna State Government), and Abubakar Gaiya Haruna (former Kaduna State PDP Chairman) — on what was originally a four-count charge of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and criminal diversion of funds before Justice S.M. Shuaibu of the Federal High Court, Kaduna. The defendants were remanded in May 2018 before later being released on bail. The matter was subsequently re-filed and amended into an eight-count charge bordering on money laundering and conspiracy under the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act. The case has been bedevilled by repeated judicial transfers: it was reassigned from Justice Shuaibu to Justice M.G. Umar, and then on Umar's transfer out of Kaduna it was reassigned to Justice Rilwanu Mohammed Aikawa, before whom the defendants were re-arraigned (most recently on the amended eight-count charge on 21 November 2022). At each re-arraignment Yero and his co-defendants have pleaded 'not guilty' and have been admitted to bail on the same terms previously granted. The EFCC opened its case-in-chief by calling its first witness, Jonah Abimaje, an acting Head of Regional Operations at a new-generation bank, who was led in evidence by EFCC counsel Nasiru Salele on the suspicious cash lodgements alleged to constitute the laundered funds. Yero has consistently denied wrongdoing through counsel, contending that the funds in question were lawful party-political contributions and not proceeds of unlawful activity, and his lawyers have repeatedly challenged the competence and particulars of the EFCC's charges. The trial has nevertheless dragged on for more than seven years without resolution, and Yero remains politically active: he defected from the PDP to the APC and clinched the APC's Kaduna North Senatorial District ticket for the 2023 elections while still on trial, drawing sharp public criticism over the propriety of fielding an indicted ex-governor for the Senate.