Former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has apologised to the Kaduna State High Court and withdrawn three applications previously filed by his legal team in his ongoing corruption trial.
At Wednesday’s proceedings, El-Rufai’s new lead counsel, Paul Erokoro (SAN), sought the court’s permission to discontinue the applications, describing them as confrontational in nature.
Erokoro, who recently took over the defence, said after reviewing the filings, he could not adopt some of the language used in the earlier applications and had therefore filed a fresh application.
He urged the court to grant him more time to file the new application and formally withdraw the pending ones.
Responding, prosecution counsel Ibrahim Muktar opposed the move, arguing that the defence had continued to file multiple applications seeking the trial judge’s recusal, a development he described as an attempt to delay the trial.
Muktar said the prosecution had assembled its witnesses for the hearing on July 6 but proceedings could not commence because of the applications filed by the defence.
According to him, the repeated applications have frustrated efforts to begin the substantive trial despite the prosecution’s readiness to proceed.
Following the defence’s request, the court adjourned the matter until July 22, 2026, for hearing on the fresh application.
