Showing posts with label Gov Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gov Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Nasir El Rufai And Wages Of Sin

by Yinka Odumakin  
The Nigerian Bar Association, in an audacious move and a very classic naming and shaming act, has withdrawn its invitation to Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to speak at its conference following protests from some lawyers. 
The tweet on Thursday announcing the decision read, “The National Executive Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association at its ongoing meeting resolves that the invitation to the Kaduna State Governor, H.E. Nasir El-Rufai, by the 2020 Annual General Conference Planning committee be withdrawn and decision communicated to the Governor.” 
*Gov El Rufai and President Buhari 
A petition to stop the governor started by a lawyer, Usani Odum, had garnered over 3,150 signatures on Change. Org as of 4 pm on Thursday.            
In a separate letter titled, ‘Request to Withdraw the Offer of Platform at the 2020 Annual General Conference of the NBA to Mallam Nasir el-Rufai,’ addressed to the Chairman, Technical Committee on Conference Planning, NBA, Prof. Koyinsola Ajayi(SAN), some lawyers said the governor must not be allowed to speak at the conference. 

El-Rufai: Disinvited

By Sam Omatseye
This is not the time to hold grudges against Malam Nasir El-Rufai. It is not the time to say he, like Napoleon, suffers a small man’s syndrome, or that he pulled down the homes of rivals. It is not the time to say his mind has not grown above his height, and that he does not deserve to speak about who is a Nigerian.

*Gov El Rufai and President Buhari 
So, some avatars of liberty will say the Nigerian Bar Association railed against the three Johns of thinkers: Locke, Mill, Rousseau. They invited him to their conference only to disinvite him. The man salivated over an empty table. They probably did that because the man has a sour tongue, a fratricidal impulse, pitches tribe against tribe and, in the vexed issue of southern Kaduna, El-Rufai has taken sides, and has anointed violence against peace.

Monday, August 24, 2020

NBA Had Also Withdrawn Maurice Iwu's Invitation

By Usman Okai Austin
In 2008, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Maurice Iwu's invitation as a Guest (not even a Speaker) to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA)’s  Annual General Conference (AGC) of that year was withdrawn because of a protest from a cross section of Lawyers, due to his unremorseful and very poor handling of the 2007 general elections as the then INEC Chairman?

Do you know that no sectional, partisan, religious or ethnic group threatened boycott of the AGC as a result of the de-invitation of Prof. Iwu?
Elrufai is not the founder of this country neither is Nigeria named after his father. NBA only responded to public outcry and condemnation.

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Natasha Akpoti: Heroine Of The Kogi Election

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
As I write now, I am not too sure that I will be able to readily remember the full name of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate – the major opposition contestant in the November 16, 2019 gubernatorial election in Kogi State. So, it should not be surprising that I probably wouldn’t have heard about Natasha Hadiza Akpoti, the intelligent and courageous young lady who flew the governorship flag of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in that election if some fellows in the state’s murky political scene did not choose to attract undue attention to the state by stretching their desperation and crude politics to unimaginable extremes in their determination to run Natasha out of the governorship contest. 
*Natasha Akpoti
Indeed, my interest in what happens in Kogi had been so badly depleted by the unedifying record of Gov Yahaya Bello whose most significant achievement in office appears to be his successful de-marketing of the very outstanding campaign undertaken by some young Nigerians to push for the greater participation of the younger generation in the leadership of this country. It is so demoralising that when anyone tries these days to applaud and strengthen the case of this laudable advocacy (whose delicious fruit was the signing into law of the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Bill by President Muhammadu Buhari on May 31, 2018), the predictable retort usually fired back at one is: what of Yahaya Bello, is he not a young man? What is the guarantee that other young people would not only replicate his dismal record if they assumed leadership positions? It is as bad as that. 

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Buhari, El-Rufai And Other Body Bag Democrats

By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Any doubt about the nation being imperilled by its warped leadership recruitment has been counteracted by sundry developments in this electoral season. We are again confronted with the stark reminder that in over five decades, those we have entrusted with leadership have often unravelled as a bunch of incompetents who strive to plumb the nadir of retrogression. Thus, the tragedy is that in every epoch, the messiah we think has been thrown up to reverse the savage depredations of his predecessor uncannily considers himself as holding the mandate of surpassing the greed and a lack of direction of past national villains.
*President Buhari and Gov El-Rufai 
 To be sure, this bleak state of national affairs becomes inevitable as long as it is not those who have prepared for leadership that we allow to lead. We are neither attracted to them by the incipient genius in leadership they have demonstrated in community service nor their championing of a pro-people cause. Eventually, those we are saddled with as leaders, in the words of Nasir El-Rufai are “accidental public servants.” 

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Gov El-Rufai And Temperament To Lead

By Simon Abah
Until we groom good people for elective office, people who are selfless, driven by a sense of mission, folks who understand the importance of urgency for change, belief in community, do not wear their opinion on their sleeve, avoid flagging religious views in favour of egalitarianism and to stop putting their snout in the trough of the gravy train and free-booting.
*Gov El-Rufai 
Even if a Martian comes from Mars on a white horse with Marian ideas to transform Nigeria, we would never go above being the self-proclaimed Giant of Africa. (Simon Abah, The Guardian, 30 May 2017, Between presidential and parliamentary system of government)

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Gov El-Rufai: Throwing Stones In Glass Houses

By Luke Onyekakeyah
The unwarranted attack by the Governor of Kaduna State, His Excellency Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, against the person of former Governor of Anambra State and running mate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, His Excellency Atiku Abubakar, has exposed the bigotry of El-Rufai which he is now shifting to Peter Obi. Nigerians should ignore a personal opinion that has no weight.
*Gov El-Rufai 
I tried to look up for the meaning of bigot for better understanding. According to the Encarta Dictionary, a bigot is “an intolerant person; somebody with strong opinion, especially in politics, religion, or ethnicity, who refuses to accept different views.”

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Nigeria: The Problem With Gov El-Rufai’s Gonin Gora Demolition Threat

By Moses Ochonu
The problem with El-Rufai is not that he is a bad Governor. The problem, rather, is that he tries so hard to be seen as a good governor, so hard that he ends up undermining his own good works, causing unnecessary controversy, and exposing his bigotry and lack of executive governing temperament. He is a much better technocrat than he is a wielder of executive authority.
*President Buhari and Gov El-Rufai 
He threatened to demolish an entire community, Gonin Gora, in the middle of an ethno-religious crisis. It is a terrible idea to threaten or to actually demolish an entire community whatever crimes some members of that community may have committed. For one, it amounts to collective punishment, a primitive punitive action incompatible with modern, enlightened notions of justice, correction, and recompense. Second, it is a rather lazy, knee-jerk, thoughtless, and ultimately counterproductive response.

Monday, October 29, 2018

Nigeria: Senseless Killings As National Pastime

By Dan Amor
Irrational impulses are not surprising in the stress and tension that characterize a demented society. In an atmosphere of violence, reason is sometimes abandoned and humanitarian principles forgotten. The inflamed passions of the time lead men and women to commit atrocities. 
*President Buhari and Army Chief, Gen Burutai 

But the concern here is not with the psychological pathology of those who commit atrocities but rather with what has turned our nation into a slaughterhouse where human beings are daily killed with intimidating alacrity. Throughout modern history, atrocity propaganda has often mesmerized readers thousands of kilometres away from the scene of the crime. Often, the improbability of the actions described suggests that the stories were little more than fantasies concocted for diverse reasons from even more diverse sources.

President Buhari, Show Us Your Certificate!

By Reno Omokri
Nothing could prepare me for the shock that greeted me when I opened the dailies on Friday, October 26, 2018. Right there on the front-page headlines was the news that President Buhari, again, could not present his West African School Certificate Examination certificate because the original is with the army. 
*President Buhari and his wife, Aisha
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! That lame excuse could hardly suffice in 2015 when President Jonathan was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but it is certainly an untenable excuse today!

Sunday, October 28, 2018

When Will Northern Youths Truly Be Free?

By Simon Abah
The deaths of and whispered deaths of people in far-away places in Kaduna can lead to the deaths of hundreds of people in the state capital. These have gone on for too long with no end in sight other than preachment for tolerance and for people to learn to live in peace when the dust settles. Leaders go about begging people to live in peace. Beg? No-one is ever punished; the benefactors are always in the wind.
Pastors, Bishops, Sheiks or Chief Imams, have failed the north by the way they have handled these repeated crises in northern Nigeria because they are habituated to being politically correct every time instead of calling a spade by its name, shrinking violets. Who doesn’t know that politicians in the north play on prejudices to divide and tear the people apart? What is amazing is how fast youths go about killing people. These killings would go on unabated until these youths have jobs to do but who will provide them with jobs.

Monday, September 3, 2018

What Happened To APC Report On Federalism?

By Martins Oloja
As politicians are jostling to secure their positions within #PROJECT2019, defecting to different parties in pursuit of relevance for only themselves, subordinating the sanctity of the rule of law to personal interests, perfecting how to truncate press freedom, we need to ask political leaders in the governing party what they want to do with the most important document they produced and made public in January this year: ‘Report of The APC Committee on True Federalism’.
*Buhari and el-Rufai 
 
I am fully persuaded that it is public interest to ask about this all-important document and failure to be genuine about how to implement the contents before next year’s election may undermine national security too. And here is the thing, those who always afraid of the hard questions in the governing APC, should not regard this question on what they want to do with their report as a political question: It is a question on nation building and the future of the world’s most populous black nation, Nigeria.

Monday, July 23, 2018

Between Jonathan, Buhari’s Cabinets, Facts Speak For Themselves!

By Reno Omokri
In a tweet he tweeted on January 9, 2012, the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, tagged Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala a “zero”. Not too long after, a nasty little child who was promoted by the same El-Rufai, tweeted that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was ‘overrated’.
*Jonathan and Buhari 
The two characters aforementioned also spouted some of the vilest things about former President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, with the nasty little El-Rufai social media sidekick comparing then President Jonathan to a “dead pig” and referring to his wife as a “natural disaster”.

To say El-rufai threw decorum to the wind would be the understatement of the year. He insulted former President Jonathan while he was praying, calling him “stupid” and “lazy” as he prayed to his God. El-Rufai’s ill-brought up children also joined the fray and used some of the most uncouth language on the then President. And then it became the turn of LaiMohammed and his principals, Muhammadu Buhari and pastor Yemi Osinbajo.

It seemed they were in a competition to outdo themselves in a bid to cast aspersions on the person of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and his government. Clueless, useless, inept and incompetent were some of the choice words they used to describe either the then President or his administration. While campaigning in February 2014, then candidate Muhammadu Buhari said he ‘would not continue with the programmes and policies of President Jonathan’s administration, because to continue with the ideas of a government that does not have a clue signals danger’.

His deputy, Osinbajo accused the Jonathan administration of lacking ‘commitment’ and promised that their administration would do better. Not to be undone, Lai Mohammed called Dr. Jonathan ‘clueless’, “callous”, “insensitive” and “punch drunk”! All three of them promised to give Nigeria a better government and reverse the “rot” of the Jonathan years. Yet in three years of being in office, the Buhari administration has been unable to initiate, start and complete any project in three years. Where they met an economy that was growing at an unprecedented rate of 6.7%, they negatively turned the table and in six months, an economy that was officially cited as the third fastest growing economy in the world in 2015 and the largest economy in Africa, officially went into corruption!

Whereas, Nigeria gained 3 million new jobs in the last three years of Jonathan, we have lost 11 million jobs in the same period of review under Muhammadu Buhari. Do not look at me. Those figures came from the National Bureau of Statistics which is owned and controlled by the government Buhari heads! President Buhari, a man who claimed that then President Jonathan was weak on security has been faced with an ever increasing level of herdsmen killings.

There is a lot of press coverage over the fact that there has been 1,692 civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2018, which is the highest number in the war on terror to date. The sad fact is that this number is not up to the number of Nigerians who died in the first 10 weeks of 2018. Yet Nigeria is supposedly at peace while Afghanistan is at war!

Faced with these facts, you would expect the clueful Buhari to come up with strategies to stem the killings, instead, he had this to say: “There is nothing I can do to help the situation except to pray to God to help us out of the security challenges” (I am not making this up, Buhari actually said that). When bandits killed 34 people in Sokoto two week’s ago, the same President Buhari said Nigerians should be patient because ‘my security teams are cracking their brains’!

To think that this is the man who called Jonathan and his government clueless is so annoying! And to show you how jobless President Muhammadu Buhari is, he could not visit Sokoto State, where 32 Nigerians were killed by bandits, but he traveled to the Netherlands to attend the 20th anniversary of the International Criminal Court.

NO OTHER Head of State attended the anniversary other than Buhari! The man places no priority on his citizens’ life. How can he expect the world to value him when the world knows he does not value his own people? And the truth is that as long as Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressive Congress are in power, Nigeria is not going to make any real progress. I mean look at the people who make up the Buhari cabinet!

Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s minister for finance got her PhD in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On Thursday July 19, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter appointed Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to the board of Twitter. She also seats on the boards of Lazard, Gavi and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. President Buhari’s minister of finance on the contrary went to a London Polytechnic, seats atop a recessed economy and is accused of forgery. Now tell me who is CLUELESS between Jonathan and Buhari?

It is commonly said, show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. A good leader knows that he or she is a product of his or her environment so they surround themselves with the best people. This is a principle that Jonathan lived by. Can the same be said about President Buhari? A leader should surround himself with those who are on the same mission as himself. Looking at President Buhari and the people he has surrounded himself with, I am tempted to believe that the mission the President has chosen for himself is a mission to fail!

Ex President Jonathan’s former health minister is now a Professor at America’s Duke University. His former agriculture minister is now the President of the African Development Bank. His former finance minister sits on the board of Twitter, Gavi, Lazard and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. His communications minister is now the Chairperson of the global Alliance for Affordable Internet. All this is happening while President Buhari and his finance minister are still looking for their certificates!

Buhari’s Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, was fingered for high level fraud and was so incompetent that Nigeria’s equity markets kept shrinking under him. Compare this with Arunma Oteh, who tripled the net worth of our capital market to $150 billion and was so good at her job that she was appointed a vice president and treasurer at the World Bank. Now take all these in and again ask yourself who is truly clueless between Jonathan and Buhari? Back to Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, my response to him on his ‘zero’ tweet is as follows-Thank God Twitter, GAVI, Lazard and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank do not think that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a zero.

But the curious thing is that El-Rufai, who thinks that he is a hero, has not accomplished anything worthwhile as Governor of Kaduna state. He had saddled his state with debt, pays herdsmen by his own admission, while internal strife kills his own citizens. After six years, we now know who the real zero is. As for Lai Mohammed, the man who told Nigerians that President Buhari’s achievements have ‘exceeded his promises to Nigerians’, Nigerians laughed when he launched ‘A National Campaign Against Fake News’.

This is like satan opening a church. Lai Mohammed and fake news are 5 and 6. They are Siamese twins! Lai should buy a mirror and arrest the person he sees there and by so doing he will reduce fake news in Nigeria by half! The truth is that when you compare and contrast Jonathan’s cabinet with Buhari’s cabinet, the facts speak for themselves?

-------------------

RELATED POST

Lai Mohammed: An Unmanageable Mistake!




Monday, May 14, 2018

Kaduna Council Polls: Highly Provocative, Indefensible Fraud – PDP

Press Statement
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rejects as highly provocative, fraudulent and completely indefensible the alteration of final results and declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner in areas clearly won by the PDP in the Kaduna state local council elections held on Saturday.
From the reports of results at the polling centers, it is clear that the PDP defeated the APC in most of the areas where elections held across the state, including Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s ward where the PDP led with over 90% percent of the votes cast.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

President Buhari And The Irresistible Allures Of Lagos!

By Olugbenga David
On Thursday, after commissioning a bus stop - Ghana will in May, commission their new and futuristic Kotoka International Airport - in paralysed Lagos, President Buhari went to the main event that brought him to Lagos, the Bola Tinubu Day, which has now been surreptitiously made into a national holiday.
 
*President Buhari, Bola Tinubu, Oluremi
Tinubu, during Buhari's visit to Lagos
And while Mr. President was attending events to mark this birthday, the Army was burying 11 soldiers in a very lowkey funeral in Kaduna. The soldiers were killed at Birnin Gwari, Kaduna State, several days earlier, reportedly by late Buharin Daji’s murderous bandit group.

This was the same day also, that dozens were killed, for the umpteenth time, in Zamfara, said to be by the same Buharin Daji’s murderous group. But the President did not care to even ask for a minute’s silence in honour of the murdered soldiers. Nor silence in honour of the poor peasants killed. He only had time and words of praise for the Jagaban Borgu, whose electoral value is suddenly attractive, valuable and desirable to the President. After all, 2019 elections are here, and John Odigie-Oyegun has no electoral value in the new turn of events and scheme of things. So the Jagaban must be vigorously courted, and be properly romanced.

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Nigeria’s Arrested Development And Bill Gates Wake-Up Call

By Magnus Onyibe
By now, most Nigerians would be familiar with Bill Gate’s incisive perspective on Nigeria’s development because his speech to the National Economic Council has gone viral. So there is no need repeating the fact that he identified health and education as sectors that Nigerian policy makers have to rejig in the Economic Recovery Growth Plan, ERGP to enable the full realization of our country’s potentials. This is because he noticed that even if the ERGP boasts of being focused on Nigerian people via investment in healthcare and education which are the critical elements of human development, attention seem to be skewed in favor of physical infrastructure to the detriment of sustainable human development from birth.
*Bill Gates
According to Gates, for real development that would make reasonable impact on the polity to take place, both human and physical infrastructure have to be developed pari pasu.
To me, Gates’ perspective is a pretty straight forward analogy of the prospects and impediments to Nigeria’s much anticipated lift off from the poverty trap. But such positive optics of Gates presentation is not shared by Nasir El Rufai who was part of the audience at the forum. He faulted Gates’ presentation and offered a counter view which is that the ERGP is a great document as it is. He is of the view that it only needs to be adopted at the state level for the vision behind it to be accomplished.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Why Gov Nasir El-Rufai Must Arrest Religious Mayhem In Southern Kaduna


By by Erasmus Ikhide
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has been unfortunate to be voted in as the “accidental governor” of Kaduna State. Since 1980, the crocodile state has been floating on the river of blood visited on it by those who find it nauseating to reside in the same neighbourhood and space as those who do not share the same faith and religion. How we arrive at this mind-wrecking and anti-humanistic station in our journey into nationhood — even when all religion preach tolerance and peaceful cohabitation is something that constitutes a blight on us, as people.
*Gov El-Rufai
The latest Christian and Muslim clash in Southern Kaduna that took place at Kasuwan Magani town in Kajuru Local Govenment Area of Kaduna State, over which over a 1,000 houses were torched and several souls lost two days ago is not salutary to whatever efforts the Kaduna State Commissioner of Police claimed to have made. 

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

On President Buhari, I Stand With Obasanjo

By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Again, we are in the political silly season. Not that it just kicked off. No, Nigeria is a country in a permanent state of politicking. In reality, there is never time for governance. The end of one election circle jumpstarts another and the actions of incumbents are informed not by the desire to deliver on good governance but the need to win the next election.
*Obasanjo and Buhari 
So, ministers and board members of government agencies are appointed not on the basis of capacity and competence, but who has the political muscle and “structure” to deliver on the next election. Ditto for heads of security agencies who are appointed on extraneous considerations such as who helped in rigging the previous election and who can be counted upon in the next election.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

APC, NNPC And Procurement Disease

By Alabi Williams
I wonder how Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna State feels at the moment. I wonder what his thoughts are now of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Remember his ‘kill NNPC or NNPC will kill us’ theory in the early days after the enthronement of their party? He waxed lyrical about his prescription for the corporation and the oil industry, which at the time was thought to be in a hopeless state, after the last regime made mincemeat of it.

It was in July 2015, the new government had been installed and all those who worked for the party, saints all of them, were upbeat on how to unleash a sinless regime where there is no corruption. El Rufai was to deliver a media lecture to mark the 81st birthday of Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. He got for himself a fitting topic on how to sanitse the NNPC, which in its apogee of malfeasance was about to kill Nigeria. He thus propounded the topic urging that we kill NNPC before it kills Nigeria.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Southern Kaduna Massacres On My Mind

By  Sufuyan Ojeifo
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne
Southern Kaduna is a microcosm of Nigeria.  It is, by any stretch of the imagination, emblematic of our collectivity.  The people, who are marooned in their troublous ancestral Kaduna locale share a common civilization with us who are, somewhat, liberated in the ambiance of the expansive Nigerian-nation. Therefore, the killings of southern Kaduna indigenes by Fulani herdsmen, for whatever reasons, are nothing but fatal assaults on the humanity in all of us. 

The south of Kaduna has, historically, become a minefield of mindless genocide that has left the people immersed in eternal fear.  Scores of indigenes have been killed by installments.  Unfortunately, many more will, painfully, be victims of Fulani herdsmen’s fatal rampages as there are yet no verifiable foolproof measures in place to avert the incessant cold-blooded massacres that have been the tragic narrative of the hapless people.
One is continuously diminished by the killing of a man or woman, youth or child in southern Kaduna, an enclave that is predominantly occupied by Christian population.  “One life taken in cold blood,” according to the late inimitable journalist, Dele Giwa, “is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.”