Before O.J., There Was Nafiu Rabiu
The forgotten trial that tested the soul of Nigeria’s justice system
Every generation has a trial that grips the public imagination and exposes the moral foundations of the justice system.
For Americans, it was the O.J. Simpson case, a collision of fame, tragedy, and the law.
For Nigerians, long before that, it was the case of Nafiu Rabiu v. The State, a courtroom drama that shook Kano to its core and changed the interpretation of our Constitution forever.
In the city of Kano, there are two streets named Court Roads.
One leads to the magistrates’ complex on Zungeru Road in Sabon Gari.
The other, tucked in Gyadi-Gyadi near Zoo Road, has a heavier story.
Its official name is New Court Road, but the people of Kano still call it Layin Kotun Nafiu — Nafiu’s Court Road.
The name is a permanent reminder of a time when the city became the stage for one of Nigeria’s most sensational trials.
The year was 1979.
The man at the centre was Nafiu Isyaku Rabiu, the eldest son of the wealthy cleric and industrialist Sheikh Isyaku Rabiu.
Nafiu was a “prima donna of Kano socialites”, a man known for his “opulent lifestyle”.
On the evening of May 9, 1979, Nafiu and his wife, Hajiya Fati Mohammadu Nafiu, hosted a dinner party in the garden of their home on Dawaki Road, attended by three friends.
The evening was cheerful and pleasant.
The cook later recalled that Hajiya Fati was “in good health, joking……….”
After the party, all the guests left except one, the District Head of Jahun. He also left between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and at the time he left, Hajiya Fati was quite alright.
As employees retire, a fatal but straightforward act occurs. The driver, who usually kept the key to the only entrance gate, was approached by Rabiu.
Rabiu “offered to lock the gate” himself, and he did. Without hesitation, the driver handed the key to his master.
The lock clicked shut. Inside the compound, with all the other employees gone, only two people remained: Nafiu and his wife, Hajiya Fati.
The next morning, May 10, the cook arrived for duty but found the gate still locked. Inside the premises, he could see the driver, who had slept in the boys ‘ quarters, also standing outside the main house, unable to get in. The house remained silent for two hours.
At 10 a.m., the window was opened upstairs. Rabiu, still inside the house, “threw the key to the driver.
Once inside the premises, the cook was given a series of bizarre instructions. Rabiu called out that he had “misplaced the key to the front door” and asked the cook to open the kitchen door. Rabiu then emerged from the house carrying a briefcase and “some quantity of ‘soiled blankets and clothes” ’. At his request, the driver placed the bundle in the boot of Rabiu’s Peugeot 504.
Next, the instructions were provided.
First, Rabiu told the cook “to give to Hajiya Fati whatever she required, whenever she woke up”, suggesting that she was “still asleep”.
Second, he sent the driver to take the other car, a Mercedes-Benz, to the airport to pick up his mother-in-law, who, Rabiu said, was arriving from Niamey, the capital of Niger.
Rabiu then got into the Peugeot 504, the car containing the soiled blankets, and drove away.
When the driver returned from the voyage, Nafiu instructed him to take the Peugeot to a mechanic for repairs. The driver first checked the boot to remove the blankets before proceeding with the trip.
They “were no longer there”.
At 2 p.m., the final act of the charade began to unfold. Rabiu instructed another driver to bring his children to the house “to call on their mother”. The cook let them in, and the children ran up the stairs. Moments later, they called out: they had “tried to wake up their mother, but she failed to respond”.
The cook advised them to wait for their father to return. He “arrived in his Mercedes saloon car shortly” after the meeting began. He, the children, and the cook went into the room. There, they “discovered” that Hajiya Fati was dead.
The news exploded.
The story seized Kano. This was not just a domestic tragedy; it was a test of the state’s soul.
There was a “substantial public outcry”. The victim’s father, a multi-millionaire, Tijjani Aliyu Dagazau, vowed to see justice served.
The people of Kano State were very interested in the story. The Government of Kano State “took a vow” to ensure that justice was done.
The subsequent trial was a sensation. The courtroom was so packed that it earned the nickname it holds to this day: “Kotun Nafiu”—Nafiu’s Court.
In court, the state’s case, on its face, was overwhelming. Nafiu was presented before a judge. The judge’s name was Jeffrey Richard Jones, a retired Flight Lieutenant during World War II who became a British Lawyer and a Nigerian judge.
He was the judge who tried the case of Alhaji Rauph Gaji v. State in Kaduna.
The State’s case came down to a “battle of the pathologists” over the cause of death.
Dr Bansi Badan Tribedi, a Senior Consultant Pathologist with decades of experience, performed the autopsy. His testimony was chilling and shocking. The body’s face was “cyanosed” (blue), there was “froth and foam at the mouth and nostrils,” and the fingernails were “intense blue”. Most damning of all, he found “transverse contusions and abrasions on the right neck.” His conclusion was unequivocal: “asphyxia resulting from strangulation; choking by hands”.
Nafiu called three pathologists in his defence to argue an alternative explanation: “alcoholic poisoning”.
The trial judge listened to the conflicting testimony. In his judgment, he did two things that would become the pivot for the entire legal drama:
First, he rejected the defence’s medical theories. He found that Dr Akinade’s claims were “not supported by the book on Forensic Medicine produced by him”. The judge found that Dr Odesami “was wrong” to claim the neck marks were mere “livid stains,” especially since, as the judge noted, he “did not even see the body”.
Second, the judge completely accepted the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence. He wrote:
“I have been unable to find evidence to raise a reasonable doubt that throughout the relevant time nobody but the accused was with the deceased… I cannot find and I do not believe that any judge or jury could find… a reasonable doubt that if the deceased was strangled she was strangled by the accused”.
The defence was in tatters. The judge confirmed that Rabiu had the exclusive opportunity and was the only person who could have committed the crime.
The judge then delivered the verdict.
The judge found Nafiu to be not guilty.
The courtroom and the state were both shocked. How? The judge’s reason was that the prosecution’s medical evidence on the cause of death was “unsatisfactory”.
The acquittal was shocking. The public outcry was immediate.
In a bold and rare move, the State appealed to the Court of Appeal.
At the Federal Court of Appeal, the Hon. Justices Mamman Nasir, B. O. Kazeem, and Philip Nnaemeka-Agu presided.
Hon. Justice Mamman Nasir was the Attorney General and lead prosecution counsel in Alhaji Rauph Gaji v. State (as mentioned above).
The Court of Appeal agreed with the State, “set aside the order of acquittal”, and convicted Rabiu, sentencing him to four years.
This set the stage for the final historic showdown in the Supreme Court.
Rabiu appealed his conviction, not on the facts, but on constitutional grounds:
First, Nafiu’s lawyers, Chief F. R. A. Williams, SAN, B. Kehinde, J. A. Kester, and O. J. Idigbe argued that the State cannot appeal an acquittal, as it would violate the sacred principle of double jeopardy.
Double jeopardy is a legal term that refers to the principle that a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.
Second, the Constitution did not even grant the State the right to appeal an acquittal. An acquittal, they argued, isn’t a “decision” in the way a conviction is.
Finally, even if the State can appeal, it can only be on a “point of law”, not a “finding of fact”. They argued that the trial judge’s doubt about the medical evidence was a “finding of fact”, and an appeal court had no right to change it.
The Supreme Court, presided over by the Hon. Justices Udo Udoma, Ayo Gabriel Irikefe, Chukwunweike Idigbe, Andrews Otutu Obaseki, Kayode Eso, Augustine Nnamani, and Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, in a landmark judgment, answered all the questions of Nafiu’s lawyers with a resounding “NO.”
On Double Jeopardy: Justice Idigbe ruled that an appeal was not a second trial. It is merely a continuation of the first trial, ensuring that the “one continuing jeopardy” only ends when a final, correct legal verdict is reached.
On Jurisdiction: He declared that the Constitution must be given a broad, not narrow, interpretation. Of course, an acquittal is a “decision”. To argue otherwise is absurd.
On Fact vs. Law: This was the judgment’s masterstroke. Justice Idigbe agreed that the state could only appeal on a “point of law”. However, he laid down the principle that would define the case: when a trial judge comes to a decision “which no reasonable jury applying their minds to proper considerations… can come,” that decision is “perverse”.
The Supreme Court stated that trial judge Jeffrey Richard Jones had rejected all the defence’s evidence. He had accepted that Rabiu was the only possible culprit of the crime. To then acquit him based on a “gross misconception” of the prosecution’s evidence was not a reasonable “finding of fact.” This was a “perverse” finding. A perverse finding is an “error in law”.
The path to justice was now clear. The constitutional arguments were dismissed, revealing the core facts of the case. In a powerful concurring opinion, Justice Irikefe provided a moral anchor, stating that justice cannot be “viewed only from the end of the accused”.
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. The conviction stood. The case was over, leaving a permanent mark on Nigerian law, ensuring that a “perverse” verdict could never be the final word.
Long before the world heard of O.J. Simpson, Nigeria had its own courtroom drama—a story of wealth, power, and the arduous pursuit of justice.
When the dust finally settled, one lesson remained: truth may sleep, but it never dies.
Thank you for reading. My name is Sani Ammani. It pleases me to read, comforts me to write, and delights me to speak. Stick with my posts, and you’ll never be sad again.
