The National Hospital Abuja’s memo to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has confirmed that a former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, is not a registered patient of the hospital, while distancing itself from a medical report purportedly issued and relied upon in his application for bail.
The hospital’s letter dated June 18, 2026, and signed by the Chief Medical Director/Chief Executive Officer, Professor Muhammad Raji Mahmud, was obtained by SaharaReporters on Saturday.
The letter was written in response to an ICPC request seeking clarification over the authenticity of a medical report allegedly prepared by one of the hospital’s consultants and tendered by El-Rufai in support of his application for bail on medical grounds.
Responding to the anti-graft agency, the National Hospital confirmed that Dr. Bello Abubakar, the consultant whose name appeared on the disputed report, is a Chief Consultant Radiation Oncologist employed by the hospital on a contract basis following his retirement.
However, the hospital said exhaustive checks of its records showed no evidence that El-Rufai had ever been registered or treated at the facility.
The hospital memo reads, “Reference to your letter (ref: ICPC/INV/GBP/DOPS/177) dated 17th June 2026, I write to acknowledge that we have a Chief Consultant Radiation Oncologist with the name Dr. Bello Abubakar in our employment. He is on contract appointment after his retirement from service in this hospital. Paragraph 4 of your letter has requested me to furnish the Commission with some information, thus:
ii. In the first instance, we noticed that there was no hospital number quoted on the medical report. However, we still searched through our Electronic Medical Records using the name El-Rufai Nasir Ahmad, using different permutations, and also painstakingly searched through the names of patients that visited Oncology clinic around the 1st and 2nd weeks of June 2026, but could not find a name that matched. Having the hospital number or a personal phone number would have given us specific identifiers for the search. So, going by above, we could say that the name Malam El-Rufai Nasir Ahmad is not a registered name or patient in the National Hospital Abuja.
“We could not find a hospital number to match the above name and therefore we are not able to identify hospital visits and receipts for services rendered at the hospital, if at all any. We are not able to identify visits to any department or doctors in the National Hospital.
“iv. The Management of National Hospital was not aware of the written by Professor Bello Abubakar Mohammed dated 10th June, 2026 until presented by the ICPC Even though it was written on the National Hospital letterhead, it is not with the knowledge of the Hospital Management. I hope you find this information useful.”
The memo provides further details of the hospital’s position, which the ICPC had earlier cited in opposing El-Rufai’s application for bail before the Kaduna State High Court.
As previously reported by SaharaReporters, Justice D. H. Khobo, on June 29, 2026, dismissed El-Rufai’s third application for bail, which was based on medical grounds.
The former governor had relied on a medical report purportedly issued by the National Hospital, Abuja, claiming he had been diagnosed with advanced metastatic prostate cancer requiring specialised treatment unavailable in Nigeria.
However, the ICPC tendered a response from the National Hospital’s Chief Medical Director disowning the report and stating that a comprehensive search of the hospital’s electronic medical records revealed no patient file, hospital number, consultation history, billing record or any evidence that El-Rufai had ever received treatment at the hospital.
In its ruling, the court held that the credibility of the medical report had been fundamentally undermined after it was formally disowned by the institution on whose letterhead it was issued.
Justice Khobo consequently ruled that the report could not serve as a basis for granting the exceptional relief of bail on medical grounds and dismissed the application.
The court, however, directed the ICPC to continue granting El-Rufai unrestricted access to his personal medical doctors and to escort him to any specialised diagnostic or medical facility of his choice within Nigeria whenever necessary while his trial continues.
