Offa bank robbery: Kwara govt drops 18 charges against Saraki, Ahmed

… add two new charges

By Demola Akinyemi Ilorin

In a dramatic twist, the Kwara State Government has filed an amendment to its initial 20-count charge against its two former governors, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki and Alhaji Abdulfatai Ahmed, over the 2018 Offa bank robbery case by dropping 18 of the original charges while retaining only two and adding two new charges.

In the amended charge sheet with Charge Number KWS/114C/2026 signed by the State Attorney General, Senior Ibrahim Sulyman (SAN), sighted by journalists in Ilorin, the government by implication has now reduced the total number of charges to four.

In the new charge sheet, Counts 1 and 2 accused Saraki, Ahmed, Yusuf Abdulwahab and Alabi Olalekan of “conspiring to belong to a gang of thieves” and “belonging to a gang of thieves”.

Also, counts 3 and 4, accused the quartet of concealment and disappearance of a “vehicle used for illegal purpose”.

A motion on notice for the amended charges dated November 6th, 2026, has been filed by the prosecution and supported by a 6-paragraph affidavit deposed to by Sulyman Mohammed-Jamiu, a litigation clerk in the office of the Kwara State AG.

It will be recalled that at the last sitting of the State High Court on the case on November 5th, 2026, the judge, Justice Osuolale Ajayi, reserved his ruling on the issue of whether he could continue with the arraignment while the defendant has a pending application for a stay of proceedings on the matter at the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal on November 3rd, 2026, advised the lawyer, Abdulfatah Ahmed, J. A. Mumini, SAN, to formally make his application for the court to issue an order that the parties at the trial court should maintain status quo ante bellum instead of the oral submission that he made to the court.

The appellate court then adjourned the case to November 12, 2026.

The case at the trial court which commenced in April 2026 has not proceeded to trial as the court is still mired in several preliminary issues which have been taken to the appellate court.

Contacted, a member of Saraki and Ahmed’s legal team described the struggle by the prosecution to press charges against the two former governors as “a mockery of the judicial process and an exercise in futility”.

Vanguard reliably gathered that failure to make any headway by the Kwara state government may not be unconnected to the two pieces of legal advice issued in 2018 by the Office of the Federal Director of Public Prosecutions in the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, who, after reviewing the police investigation file on the Offa robbery case in 2018, concluded that there is no evidence remotely or directly linking Saraki or Ahmed to the Offa robbery incident.