By Abayomi TJ Ishola
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By the time Justice James Omotosho withdrew from the ₦10.27 billion money-laundering case in Abuja on September 24, 2026, the case had acquired an extraordinary second life.
It had started as a familiar Nigerian corruption story: billions allegedly missing from a state treasury, politically connected defendants, an anti-graft agency and a long courtroom battle. But somewhere along the road, the money ceased to be the only thing missing.
Evidence went missing too.
And that is potentially more disturbing.
The case began in 2022, when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, filed charges against Ali Bello, Dauda Sulaiman and Abdulsalami Hudu over alleged misappropriation and money laundering involving ₦10,270,556,800 said to have been diverted from the Kogi State Government treasury.
Ali Bello is the nephew of former Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello. The EFCC alleged that the money was delivered to Bureau de Change operator Rabiu Usman Tafada for safekeeping or conversion into foreign currency. The defendants denied the allegations.
The prosecution subsequently amended its charges. By 2026, Ali Bello and Sulaiman were facing a 16-count amended charge involving the alleged ₦10.27 billion misappropriation and money laundering. The EFCC eventually called 17 witnesses.
So far, this was another long-running financial-crime prosecution.
Then came February 5, 2026.
That date should now be marked in the chronology of the case with a red pen.
Justice Omotosho told the court that his registrar, Nasiru Onimisi Zubairu, had come to his residence at about 6:30 a.m. and allegedly confessed to tampering with an exhibit already admitted in evidence.
The exhibit was a mobile phone containing WhatsApp conversations.
According to the judge, the registrar alleged that Sulaiman had approached him to delete messages from the phone. The inducement, according to the account before the court, was accommodation or a house. The registrar allegedly used a code to wipe messages from Exhibits N and O.
Think about the setting.
This was not an allegation that somebody had tampered with a document lying in a politician’s house or an office cupboard. It concerned evidence that had already crossed the threshold of the Federal High Court and was under the protection of the institution itself.
The court was supposed to be the evidence’s safe house.
Instead, the safe house had apparently developed a leak.
Justice Omotosho played a recording of the conversation and summoned the registrar to explain himself. The court then examined the phone.
The messages were missing.
EFCC investigator Muhammed Audu Abubakar confirmed that material previously seen on the device was no longer there. The missing conversations reportedly covered 2020 to 2022 and included references to large sums of money. Among them were messages referring to ₦100 million, ₦60 million, ₦30 million, ₦50 million, ₦93 million and ₦7 million.
One message reportedly said, “Hudu will bring it now.” Another referred to “Mr Ododo” having collected ₦50 million.
These messages may be important evidence, but they are not, by themselves, proof that the alleged transactions occurred or that any defendant is guilty. That distinction matters.
Yet another distinction matters even more.
The court had evidence that its evidence had been altered.
That should have been the moment when every institutional siren in Nigeria’s criminal justice system began screaming.
Justice Omotosho ordered the Nigeria Police Force and the Department of State Services to investigate the registrar and Sulaiman. He also ordered a forensic examination of the relevant devices and communications.
The question was no longer merely: Did ₦10.27 billion disappear?
It had become:
Who interfered with the evidence, how did they do it, and why was evidence inside a court vulnerable to interference in the first place?
Then came another remarkable twist.
The trial did not stop.
On February 16, 2026, EFCC investigator Ahmed Audu Abubakar appeared as the 17th prosecution witness. He testified about financial records allegedly linking funds from the Kogi Government to Ali Bello and Sulaiman. The prosecution continued presenting its case despite the shadow hanging over Exhibit N.
The irony was almost too neat for fiction.
The prosecution was trying to prove where the money had gone while the court was simultaneously trying to establish where parts of the evidence had gone.
It was like repairing a leaking roof while arguing over who had removed the tiles.
The EFCC eventually closed its case on June 2, 2026, having called 17 witnesses. Ali Bello and Sulaiman then filed no-case submissions, arguing that the prosecution had not produced sufficient evidence requiring them to enter a defence.
At this point, the unresolved February incident should have been particularly important.
A no-case submission requires a judge to assess whether the prosecution has produced enough evidence to justify calling upon the defendants to answer.
But what happens when one of the prosecution’s significant exhibits has itself become the subject of an unresolved investigation?
That question remained largely suspended over the proceedings like a storm cloud.
Then, on September 24, the storm broke.
Justice Omotosho withdrew from the case.
The judge was told that the DSS had completed its investigation into the alleged tampering and forwarded its report to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation at the Federal Ministry of Justice.
But there was a remarkable institutional gap.
The judge did not have the outcome.
Seven months after ordering an investigation into alleged interference with evidence central to the proceedings, the court was still without a clear investigative conclusion. EFCC counsel told the court that he was not aware of the outcome of the DSS investigation.
That is not a small administrative inconvenience.
If the investigation had been completed, why had its conclusion not reached the judge dealing with the case?
If it had not been completed, why had seven months not been enough?
And if the report had reached the Ministry of Justice, why had the court that ordered the investigation not received it?
These are legitimate institutional questions, not allegations of guilt.
Justice Omotosho recognised the problem.
He said Exhibit N was a material piece of evidence and that the controversy surrounding it could affect his consideration of the defendants’ no-case submissions. Giving the exhibit substantial weight could create one perception; giving it little or no weight could create another.
The judge therefore concluded that continuing to preside over the case could generate an appearance of bias.
He recused himself and returned the case file to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court for reassignment.
There was another complication.
Justice Omotosho disclosed that, during the pendency of the case, he had ordered the forfeiture of a Gwarimpa property to the Federal Government in a separate proceeding which he said was connected to the defendants and the case. That, too, contributed to his concern about how his continued participation might be perceived.
There is something deeply uncomfortable about this chronology.
2022: billions allegedly disappear.
February 5, 2026: evidence allegedly disappears.
February 5, 2026: the court orders the Police and DSS to investigate.
February 16: the prosecution continues with its 17th witness.
June 2: the EFCC closes its case.
September 24: the judge withdraws because the evidence-tampering issue remains unresolved.
Seven months.
Seven months between the court’s alarm and the judge’s eventual withdrawal.
That gap deserves scrutiny.
Nigeria has become accustomed to investigations that enter the bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle: everybody knows that an investigation was ordered, everybody knows that a report supposedly exists, but somehow the report cannot find its way to the place where it is needed.
Yet justice cannot operate on rumours about reports.
A court needs evidence, not institutional whispers.
And this is where the story should not be reduced to Yahaya Bello versus the EFCC.
Yahaya Bello is not the defendant in this particular case. Ali Bello and Dauda Sulaiman are. Yahaya Bello faces separate EFCC proceedings arising from allegations concerning his tenure as Kogi Governor. Those proceedings must be determined on their own evidence.
There is also no judicial finding that Yahaya Bello participated in the alleged evidence tampering. Nor has a court established that Sulaiman or Ali Bello is guilty of ordering the deletion of messages. The registrar’s account remains an allegation requiring due process.
But the institutional questions do not disappear merely because individual guilt remains unresolved.
Indeed, they become more important.
Because the credibility of a justice system is not measured only by how aggressively it prosecutes corruption. It is measured by whether it can preserve the evidence upon which those prosecutions depend.
A court cannot simultaneously demand that citizens trust its verdicts while leaving unanswered questions about whether evidence can be manipulated within its own corridors.
The public does not need another theatrical war between the EFCC and politically connected defendants.
It needs to know whether the chain of custody was protected.
It needs to know what happened to the deleted messages.
It needs to know who deleted them.
It needs to know whether the forensic examination recovered them.
It needs to know what the Police and DSS investigations established.
And, most importantly, it needs to know why an investigation ordered by a court in February could still be unresolved or, at least, unavailable to that court in September.
That is the real tragedy of this case.
The original allegation was that public money had allegedly been made to disappear.
Now the Nigerian justice system must confront an equally uncomfortable question:
Can evidence disappear inside the very institution established to protect it?
Until that question is answered convincingly, the Bello case will carry a burden heavier than ₦10.27 billion.
It will carry the weight of public doubt.
And once doubt enters a courtroom, it does not sit quietly in the gallery.
It takes a seat beside justice.
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