Attahiru Bafarawa - Later Career

Later Career

Attahiru Bafarawa founded the Democratic People's Party (DPP) and became its presidential candidate at the 2007 presidential elections in Nigeria. As presidential candidate, while meeting with officials of the US State Department in Washington, D.C., he promised to scrap the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) if elected, describing the commission as "a conduit of corruption and waste."

Less than two months after Bafarawa left office, the state attorney-general forwarded a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) commission, asking for investigation of his actions in office. The EFCC questioned Bafarawa, and took his passport. In July 2008, the EFCC asked a Federal High Court in Abuja not to release his passport, which he had requested for travel to receive medical treatment.

In October 2009, there was an attack on a convoy of Attahiru Bafarawa and DPP governorship candidate, Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi, at the Sultan Muhammadu Maccido Institute for Islamic Studies in Sokoto. Dingyadi alleged that the attackers were leaders of area boys of the People's Democratic Party, and said they may have been trying to assassinate him. That month the Sokoto State Commissioner of Justice said that the state was about to prosecute Attahiru Bafarawa and five others for alleged misappropriation of N2.919 billion. Bafarawa said the Sokoto commission of inquiry had been set up by the present Governor Aliyu Wamakko solely in order to discredit him. In December 2009 EFCC officials raided a meeting and arrested Bafarawa, accusing him of involvement in a 6bn naira ($40m) fraud from his time as governor of Sokoto State.