Graceland, Power and the Verdict of Posterity: A Response to Nasiru El Rufai

Baba Yunus Muhammad

I have responded to Nasir el-Rufai’s recent reflection on conscience, injustice, accountability and the verdict of posterity—not as an opponent seeking revenge, but as someone who personally experienced the consequences of a decision taken by his administration. The demolition of my home in Graceland, Zaria, in 2021 remains a deeply painful reminder that the exercise of public power must always be measured against justice, due process and the lives it affects. I leave the ultimate judgment, as we all must, to Almighty Allah.

Brother Nasir, I have read your reflection carefully, particularly your closing words about injustice, accountability, conscience and the verdict of posterity. They are profound words. But they also compel me to remember another chapter of our recent history—one in which many ordinary citizens experienced the exercise of public power very differently from the way you describe your own guiding principles.

I write this not as an opponent seeking revenge, nor as someone wishing you injury. I write as one of those who personally experienced the consequences of a decision taken by your administration.

In October 2021, my house in Graceland, Zaria, was among the properties demolished by the Kaduna State authorities. I had completed the house and moved into it in 2003, after complying with the applicable regulatory requirements and obtaining the necessary approvals.

But Graceland did not suddenly appear in 2021. People had been living there for many years before I arrived. Indeed, contemporary accounts from other residents indicate that some had acquired their land as far back as the 1980s and 1990s. One resident told THISDAY that he moved into his house in 1998 after acquiring the land through what he described as due process; another said he had purchased his land more than 20 years before the 2021 demolition.

This brings me to a question which I believe posterity itself must eventually ask: If the land unquestionably belonged to NCAT and the entire community constituted an unlawful encroachment, why was this alleged encroachment allowed to develop for decades? Why were houses permitted to be built? Why were people allowed to settle? Why did the development continue for so many years?

And, perhaps most importantly, why were government regulatory processes apparently allowed to operate in relation to properties in the area, only for the residents to be told many years later that their homes were unlawful? These are not trivial questions.

I completed my own house in 2003. By then, Graceland was already an established community. Contemporary accounts show that the dispute later became the subject of litigation, with residents asserting that they possessed Certificates of Occupancy and other official documentation.

If government authorities had permitted citizens to invest their savings, obtain approvals and construct homes over many years, then the subsequent destruction of those homes raises a profound question of administrative responsibility and fairness, quite apart from the ultimate question of title.

And I was not alone. The affected community’s current verified record puts the number of demolished properties at 434, including undeveloped plots of land. The lower figures sometimes cited publicly appear to refer principally to houses covered by Certificates of Occupancy. The distinction matters because the destruction did not concern only completed houses. It also affected land and property interests upon which people had invested.

Contemporary reporting documented residents who possessed Certificates of Occupancy and building approvals issued by Kaduna State. It also recorded claims by residents that there were court judgments in their favour and a perpetual injunction concerning the disputed land.

And yet, the bulldozers came. Homes were destroyed. Families were displaced. Years of savings, sacrifice and labour were reduced to rubble in a matter of hours. Some of the people I personally knew among those affected have since gone to their graves without seeing the matter satisfactorily resolved.

This is why I find your words about conscience, injustice and accountability impossible to read without remembering Graceland. You wrote: “As for any injustice, ingratitude or injury done to me, I seek neither revenge nor retribution. Ultimate accountability belongs to Almighty Allah, and I leave that judgment to Him, in this world and in the Hereafter.”

I agree with you completely on the last sentence. Ultimately, every one of us—those who govern and those who are governed—will answer before Allah. But accountability before Allah is not a principle that applies only when we are the injured party. It applies equally when we are the ones entrusted with authority.

There is another question that cannot be avoided. If NCAT genuinely believed that the judgments obtained by residents were wrong, why was the matter not resolved through the appellate courts?

Residents publicly maintained that several judgments had been obtained in their favour and that NCAT had not appealed them.  I do not present that assertion as a substitute for the court record. I raise it because it goes to the heart of the rule of law:

When a party disagrees with a judgment, should the answer be an appeal—or the bulldozer? There is an even larger institutional question. Why was the Kaduna State Government placed in the position of enforcing NCAT’s claim in the first place? NCAT is a Federal Government institution. Kaduna State, of course, has legitimate responsibilities concerning planning, development control and building regulation.

But there is a fundamental distinction between enforcing Kaduna State’s planning laws and using the coercive machinery of the State to recover land for a Federal institution where the ownership of that land had been contested in court.

If the demolition was genuinely about planning violations, then each affected property should be considered according to the applicable planning laws and the evidence relating to that property.

But if the underlying objective was to recover land for NCAT, then another question becomes unavoidable: Why was an executive authority being used to accomplish what should ordinarily have been settled through judicial determination and lawful judicial enforcement?

And there is yet another question: Why did NCAT wait for decades while the community developed before asserting, with such urgency, that the entire settlement constituted an encroachment? These questions do not determine the legal title to the land. Courts do that.

But they are entirely legitimate questions about due process, administrative conduct, reasonable reliance and the exercise of executive power. Indeed, contemporary reporting shows that the discovery was not some sudden discovery in 2021. It had been contested for years, with residents and NCAT presenting fundamentally different accounts of ownership and entitlement.

And that is precisely why the manner in which the matter was ultimately handled remains so troubling to those of us who lived through it. Power eventually passes. Titles disappear. Governments change. But the consequences of decisions taken in office remain in the lives of those upon whom those decisions fell.

And this brings me to your final reference to posterity. My dear brother Nasiru you wrote: “ Each of us must live with the choices we make, and posterity will render whatever verdict it sees fit.” Indeed.

But posterity does not judge only the grievances of the powerful. It also remembers the ordinary citizen whose home was demolished, the family suddenly made homeless, the elderly person whose life’s savings disappeared beneath a bulldozer, and the citizen who discovered that possessing official documents and seeking justice through the courts did not necessarily protect him when confronted by the machinery of government.

Posterity will also ask why a community that had existed for decades was allowed to grow, why citizens were allowed to invest their life’s savings there, why regulatory processes operated around those developments, and why the ultimate resolution came not through a patient judicial settlement but through the destruction of people’s homes?

These are questions that deserve answers. That is why conscience must ask not only: “ Did I stand by the people and causes I believed in?” I must also ask: “How did I treat those over whom I exercised power?”

The Qur’an gives us the answer in a command that admits no political exception: I am referring to the Qur’an because, from your own admission, in your solitary confinement in the ICPC custody, you have made the Holy Quran your living companion! “Indeed, Allah commands justice and excellence.” — Qur’an 16:90

And the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) warned us about the supplication of the oppressed, for there is no barrier between that supplication and Allah. So, brother Nasir, I do not wish you revenge. I do not wish you injury. I do not even ask that you agree with my account of what happened.

I ask something much simpler—and perhaps much more consequential: When you speak of conscience, injustice, accountability and the judgment of posterity, remember Graceland. Remember the houses.

Remember the 434 properties. Remember the families. Remember those whose lives were profoundly altered. Remember those who went to their graves without seeing the matter satisfactorily resolved. And remember those who, like myself, built homes there in good faith, believing that compliance with the requirements of government meant something. Above all, remember that the same Allah before whom we will answer for the injuries done to us is the Allah before whom those who suffered under decisions taken by us will also stand. Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of your own final words.

Posterity will indeed render its verdict. But beyond the verdict of posterity is the verdict of Almighty Allah, before whom neither political power nor historical narrative can conceal the truth.

May Allah give all of us—and especially those entrusted with authority—the humility to examine our own conduct before we are called to account before Him.

Ameen ya Rabb

Baba Yunus Muhammad is the President of the Africa Islamic Economic Forum