A Chief Magistrate’s Court in Maiduguri has granted bail to five men who were arrested in September for allegedly printing and wearing T-shirts bearing the inscription “Tinubu Must Go”, easing a case that had become a test of political expression in Borno State.
The bail was confirmed by Barrister Alkali Askira, chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Garki branch, who had been part of the legal effort on behalf of the defendants. The ruling followed an application their counsel moved after all five pleaded not guilty when they were first arraigned.
The men are Baba Aji Gremami, 44, Mustapha Abba Yemen, 28, Abbacha Mohammed Ali, 32, Adam Umar Gubio, 21, and Abdulhamid Mohammed, 21. According to a First Information Report issued by the State Criminal Investigation Department and dated 29 September 2026, they were picked up on 25 September at about 11 a.m. near the West End Roundabout area of the Borno State capital.
The Borno State Police Command charged them with criminal conspiracy, inciting disturbance, disturbance of public peace and thuggery, offences the prosecution placed under Sections 60, 78, 79 and 392 of the Borno State Penal Code. The command has insisted the men were not arrested for their political views, and its spokesman has said the operation was part of routine patrol. The allegations have not been tested, and the substantive trial has been fixed for 26 October.
What turned a street arrest into a national argument was the police account of what else they said they recovered. The command listed 15 wraps of dried leaves suspected to be Indian hemp, 100 tablets suspected to be D5, a shisha pot, a pair of scissors and two of the disputed T-shirts. Critics read the drug claim as an attempt to recast a political arrest, while the police maintained the items were found on the suspects and that forwarding the matter to court was simply due process.
Amnesty International took the sharpest position against the prosecution. The organisation described the detention as arbitrary and the charges as bizarre, and rejected the drug narrative as an effort to justify holding the men. It argued that expressing a political opinion, whether for or against a party or candidate, is not a criminal offence, and demanded their immediate and unconditional release. That stance is Amnesty’s own characterisation rather than a finding by any court.
The case also drew in the state government. Allegations circulated that Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum had directed the arrests, a claim his office firmly denied. In a statement by his special adviser on media, Dauda Iliya, the government said Zulum never mentioned the “Tinubu Must Go” group, the African Democratic Congress or any opposition faction during the media chat at the centre of the controversy, and that his remarks were directed at security, peace and public order, including concern over young men wearing shirts depicting knives and clubs.
The ADC pressed the matter from the opposite side. The party’s Borno chairman, Kolo Bukar, said four of those arrested were its members and disputed the police account, while the national leadership argued that criticising the President should not, on its own, be grounds for arrest. The party had earlier dismissed the government’s position as, in its words, impulsive and a product of political desperation. Atiku Abubakar, the ADC presidential candidate, had also called for the men’s release, framing the slogan as a demand for political change rather than a threat.
Those who defended the prosecution made a different argument. They contended that a “must go” mobilisation is not ordinary campaigning but potential incitement, and that the setting matters in a state that has endured 15 years of conflict with Boko Haram, where any gathering around a busy junction carries risk. On that reading, the law punishes intent and manner rather than opinion, and the presence of alleged drugs removed the case from the realm of pure free speech.
The episode sits within a wider contest over political slogans ahead of the 2027 elections, where “Tinubu Must Go” has become a rallying cry for sections of the opposition and a flashpoint for the authorities. It also revives an old debate about consistency, given that President Bola Tinubu himself was prominent in the 2012 protests against fuel subsidy removal under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, a comparison opposition figures have repeatedly drawn.
For now, the five men are free on bail pending trial. The charges remain live, and the court will take the substantive case on 26 October, when the competing accounts of what happened at West End Roundabout, the political message and the alleged contraband, will be weighed on the evidence rather than in public statements.