El-Rufai Curses GEJ Supporters

El-Rufai Curses GEJ Supporters

Controversial former minister of the FCT, Malam Nasir El-Rufai earlier today on Twitter placed a curse on all supporters of President Jonathan. He also tweeted several veiled insults on the person of the President and in an interview released today accused President Jonathan of leading Nigeria to disaster. In another of his Tweets he called for negotiations with Boko Haram and has been retweeting tweets from his supporters denigrating the President.

In an interview with Blue Print NG; Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has said that the Senate probe of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) was the most biased piece of legislative rascality just as he said that his administration in the FCT was a personal vendetta. In this interview with AMOS DUNIA, the bold and fearless El-Rufai said that the Jonathan administration is leading the country to disaster.

Records as minister of FCT

As a matter of policy I don’t speak about my record, I think it is for others to speak and see what I have done and also as a matter of policy I don’t comment on what my predecessors in office have done or my successes in office did or didn’t do. If you notice I have spoken about many things since I got into public light but I will never comment on BPE, because I was the DG there for nearly four years unless the Senate invites me and I am forced to speak. I just don’t just comment on that. I think I was privileged to be the minister of Abuja for four years and what I have done and did not do are all there for people to see and posterity will judge and beyond that I don’t want to say anything, because if I say anything I will be either crazy or condemning anyone.

There are many things I wish I would have done, okay, with the benefit of hindsight, there are many things I wish I had started earlier and completed before I left office. You have to wait for my book, my book is being published early next year. You will see all that.

Senate probe of the FCT

The Senate probe of the FCT was a personal vendetta of people like Senators Abubakar Sondangi and Smart Adeyemi against me because I dealt with them. Sondangi had corner shops, had illegal plots, he had a cousin who was caught cheating in promotion exam in FCT and I fired him. Some of these people are motivated by personal interest rather than national interest. So, from day one, I knew it was not going to be fair and I made it clear and we issued our own statement and we have taken them to court. The matter is in the Court of Appeal and I am confident that we will win. That probe is the most biased piece of legislative rascality I have ever come across and it is giving the Senate as a whole a bad name.

And the second one on the BPE is another useless exercise in several ways. I said it to them then when they said oh this is not a witch hunt and I said look don’t tell me that I have enough experience with you guys to know how you are and they have not turned out to be much different. Unfortunately, you know, I think we have a legislative institution that do not understand their responsibility, half of the people in the Senate are stupid people without respect and the other half that are wise, clever don’t want to tell the other half to behave themselves. They have given and are still giving the Senate a bad name. What did they write about me? They said that I got approval from Obasanjo, this is false, it is outright falsehood, if they can produce one document in which I jumped the National Privatization Council and I went to Obasanjo, they should produce it, they shouldn’t make a statement without proof, because when I appeared before them, they did not present me with a document and say you got this approval from Obasanjo rather than the National Council on Privatization, they did not produced one, they are liars.

Look I am a process person, I report to the National Council on Privatization under Vice President Atiku Abubakar. That is how I work. I am not someone that goes to sidestep the system. You cannot catch me breaking rules, I was brought up to obey rules, if I don’t like the rules I can go and get them changed by those with the power to do so, but the allegations by the Senate is false, the committee lied and they misled the Senate, the Senate approved it. That is one. Secondly they said I should be reprimanded, for what, you reprimand your employee when he is working for you. Who is going to reprimand me? Nobody in this country is big enough to reprimand me because I work for nobody. I work for myself. So, it is idiotic to say reprimand someone who does not work for you. They don’t understand these things and what is painful for me is that they are giving the important national institution like the Senate a bad name. When Senators from the US and members of the House of Lords read some of these reports they will just laugh and say what kind of country is this? They are giving the country a bad name and it’s a few of them with personal agenda that mislead the whole Senate. As I said half of the people don’t know what they are doing and the other half that do are shy to tell the other half to behave themselves.

The Senate is supposed to be a place of calm, experienced people that should say things that are wise and we all look up to, but some of the people in that Senate are just a joke, I hope one day this country will grow up and get rid of some of them, because they are giving the whole legislature a bad name, I am sorry, I have been through this, we are going to challenge them in court. Already, some people have gone to court, they investigate a company they said it’s not doing well, so they revoked the sale. How can you revoke a contract? A contract agreement that was validly executed can only be revoked if there are violations of the terms of agreement. What terms were violated? Many of these things will end up in court for the next ten years. Nothing can be revoked. The people that bought them are rich people, they are business men, they will challenge them in court, but you know they make these ridiculous recommendations and what is sad about many of these recommendations when you check, you find that some of the recommendations came because they asked the person for money and he didn’t give them. This is how they operate.

Were you asked you for money?

Nobody in this country has the gut to ask me for money since Mantu and Zwingina tried it. Nobody will ask me for money, I am a different person in that regard. Mantu and Zwingina tried it and I exposed them and since then no one in Nigeria has ever asked me for money. So, I have not been asked, but go and asked other people that these recommendations were written about, you will find all kinds of stories. You live in a country where people that are vested with responsibility used their own position just to advance their personal interest they forget that there is a country and they have children that will live in that country after they go. It is sad, but this is what we having to live with.

Jonathan’s administration

I have written extensively about that.  I think that the Jonathan’s administration is full of big words and very little achievement and the direction they are putting this country is a direction towards disaster. They are borrowing too much, they are spending all our resources on useless things, they are spending most of the resources of the country on themselves as government, they are not investing in infrastructure, they are not investing in our schools and hospitals. The quality of life of the ordinary Nigerian is going down while the quality of their lives of our leaders is going up. This is the Jonathan administration, they have no regard for anything. Now they said they want to withdraw fuel subsidy, which will cause every Nigerian, man, woman and child N8000 next year, but look at the budget they have put for themselves from N1 billion for food in the president’s house to all kinds of things. They have no sense of sacrifice but they want us as citizens to sacrifice more while they are enjoying more, it is an irresponsible approach to governance and it’s not sustainable and they are putting this country on a path of disaster and we can only pray that God will save us from where we are going or God the need to understand that the purpose of leadership is to serve, serve the public not private service, not serve yourself, but they are serving themselves, they don’t care about us and it is clear to everyone, it is clear. All those that pretended or voted for Jonathan not PDP and all that, we are laughing at them now, because within six months Jonathan has shown his true colour, which is what we were saying even ten months ago that he has been President and we have seen what he can do, now people are seeing it.

Are you not saying all these because you are now a member of the CPC?

No, I wasn’t expelled from the PDP. I chose to leave, that is one. Secondly, today if I say I want to be on Jonathan’s camp I am sure they will be happy to have me. I made a choice to be on the side of what is right. It is easier for me to remain in PDP and enjoy what they are enjoying, but I made a choice, because I don’t believe that with what God has blessed me with I should be on the wrong side just to benefit, what is that benefit, if you look at me I am okay, I am comfortable, I am not Aliko Dangote, I am not a rich man but what do I need? I don’t need anything more, so I chose to be on the side of the CPC, I know it is difficult, I know it is an opposition party, I know elections will be rigged against us, I know we will be the losing side, but I made that choice, because I will rather be on the right side of history and sleep well than to be with the winner and enjoy while my country is going down. It is a choice I made and we all make our choices. I don’t envy those in government, I feel sorry for them actually because this kind of government, I will never be part of it. Go and look at my record and see what I did in government you will know I don’t fit in this kind of government, I don’t need to say anything.

Position of the CPC on the April elections

I said it, you know in this country because of the electoral system, because of the power of incumbency and the manipulation of processes, it is very, very difficult for a party that is not in power to unseat another party in power, it has never happened in this country. So, those of us that took the decision to leave the PDP to go to other parties did so conscious of the fact that there is a very high chance that even if we are popular and we won the election at the polling unit level, the results will be changed. That was what happened. We won election in many states not only presidential election, but even governorship and so on, the result were rewritten by INEC, with the collaboration of the security agencies and many people forget that for the governorship election, virtually all the northern states were under military occupation. The results were written in INEC headquarters and military barracks.

Our people were not even allowed to come out and vote and people known this. In my state Kaduna, it was garrisoned by the military, there was curfew for months after the election, if you know you won election and you were not scared of anything why would you impose curfew for four months? Because they knew what they did and all these elections in the South-east and South-south, where there was 90 per cent turnout and the president got 99 per cent of the votes were false. The results were false, we knew but we went to the tribunal hoping that since Jega promised that there is biometric register, we will be able to take ballot paper and match the finger print with the biometric register to show how many people thumb printed each ballot paper, we will be able to prove what happened in the elections. What did they do? You know what they did? Jonathan and Katsina-Alu connived and removed Salami, reconstituted the tribunal put someone illegally as the acting President of the Court of Appeal and the new tribunal said we will not have access to ballot papers, we will not have access to the register.

*Above Interview Culled from BluePrint NG

Nigerians may also similarly recall that Malam Elrufai only in October last year publicly called on Buhari to retire from politics as he is "perpetually unelectable". Elrufai also raised up issues regarding corruption and indiscipline on the part of Buhari in the statement he released on the 10th of October, 2010 which appears below;

Response to General Muhammadu Buhari and his Party by Nasir El Rufai - 'Buhari should stick to facts'

The attention of Mallam Nassir El-Rufai has been drawn to statements from Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida purporting to be responses to the advice he gave both men to retire.

Since Babangida libelled whole generations of Nigerian youth as being unfit for leadership, age has become an issue in the coming elections. While it is true that neither youth nor age supplies wisdom on their own, it makes sense to ask those who have been recurring decimals in our country’s sorry history to leave the stage. That is all El-Rufai asked of these men who seem to think that their failure to do their best for Nigeria when they had the chance qualifies them for a return to office. Our people surely deserve better.

El-Rufai is amazed that General Buhari cannot debate this matter without scurrying to the gutter, making claims that are baseless and unsupported by any facts. Mallam El-Rufai’s tenure as FCT minister was a period of stellar performance in remaking our federal capital. Despite the difficult decisions that had to be taken to restore Abuja, Mallam El-Rufai continues to receive deserved praise and recognition for his achievements in restoring the Abuja master plan, introducing Nigeria’s first computerised land registry and helping thousands of Nigerians achieve their dreams of home ownership in the federal capital. Buhari is perhaps one of a tiny few blinded by their prejudice from recognising the quality of El Rufai’s service.

That same prejudice accounts for the baseless claims of corruption Buhari levels against El Rufai. The fact is that Mallam El-Rufai served Nigeria with integrity and has never been convicted of any corrupt act. He is boldly contesting the false charges which the Yar’Adua government filed against him in court. It is strange that a Buhari who protests when unproven claims of N2.5 billion (about US $3billion in those days!) missing oil funds are levelled against him can gleefully elevate similar claims into facts when it concerns another. How would Buhari feel if the corruption allegations made against him by Group Captain Usman Jibrin, then a board member of PTF, are today reported as if they were proven facts? So much for “corrupt background” and “shoddy performance”.

Mallam El-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known. In 1984, Buhari allowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new. Against all canons of legal decency, he used retroactive laws to execute three young men for drug-peddling after they were convicted by a military tribunal and not regular courts of law. Buhari was so high handed that he gave himself and his officials immunity even from truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4, against which truth was no defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history.

The story of counter-trade and import licensing, the cornerstone of Buhari’s stone-age economic strategy and those whose interests it served, is a tale for another day.

Mallam El-Rufai respects both Generals Buhari and Babangida as elder statesmen. He believes their age, experience and guidance may contribute to the success of any future government. El-Rufai however believes that it is time for a new generation of leaders with new thinking and wholesome democratic attitude to move our nation forward. The vicious response by the Buhari camp to a simple statement that their almost-70 principal should retire is proof enough that a Buhari, the new Democrat, tolerant of views different from his own, is yet to evolve. And that is sad, for his fledgling party and its leadership. Buhari and his cohorts may wish to reflect that it will take more than attacks on personalities to become electable. Having seen his version of discipline, Nigerians are not likely to cherish an encore. But they will welcome an engagement with the issues and problems of everyday life that have hobbled the peoples of this land.

Muyiwa Adekeye
Media Adviser to Mallam Nasir El-Rufai
October 4, 2010