In Defence Of Nasir El-Rufai

 By Sola Ebiseni

I had no intention to join the discourse on what many considered the recent vituperation of Nasir el-Rufai, immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, on the ethnic and religious politics of his state which he brazenly extended to the Nigerian federation.

*El-Rufai

I changed my mind and decided to take a look at what he had to say that has generated needless furore when I watched this morning (Monday 12th of June) on Arise Television, the encounter between Rufai and my brother, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele on the politics of the leadership of the National Assembly.

Quite unlike him and our upbringing, Ope, as we his egbons call him or MOB as he is more generally admired in politics, was pushed by the journalistically smart Rufai to be discussing regional and, most   painfully, religious politics of the National Assembly leadership. Even as much younger students leaders in all campuses across the length and breadth of the Nigerian Federation in those good old days, it was an unwritten law, indeed a taboo, to be seen discussing national, even macro campus matters, in ethnic or religious terms.

In Great Ife especially, such misdemeanour was sure to earn you the sanction of the Legislative Council or the almighty and infallible Congress. Times have so changed that I watched the former President of the National Association of Nigerian Students being pushed to number his colleagues, not really in line with their political parties, but absolutely in accordance with their faith. He latched on equity based on the need to douse the tension generated by the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket of his party as the overriding consideration for a Christian as the Leader of the National Assembly, the cap of which the party said fitted Senator Godswill Akpabio.

Reminded by Rufai that a first timer Senator Alhaji Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari, former Governor of Zamfara State, a Muslim, was gaining grounds as against the APC official preference for a ranking Senator Godswill Akpabio for the Senate presidency, MOB, among other sentiments, disclosed that 57 of the 109 Senators were indeed Christians.

Of course, how Nigeria is governed or what becomes of it, is the business of all. Besides, as a Yoruba, the religion of any candidate has really not been a factor of our political decision. Our homes and families are, in most cases and in uncommon demonstration of religious tolerance and civility, composed by adherents of different faiths: Christianity, Islam and our Traditional Religions. However, out of curiosity on account of Senator Bamidele’s disclosure, I decided to reach out for the publication of El-Rufai’s continuous religious and ethnic braggadocio.

I saw nothing really new from what we knew of the former Kaduna Governor. Being that loquacious without consideration for national peaceful coexistence has been for him a strategic political advantage. First, such loudness diminishes his diminutive structure for strategic attention. Secondly, it speaks to his fundamentalist nuances with which he harasses dispensers of political patronage to look his way as a champion of the Northern region of the country.

But this is hypocritical. When it suits him and his politics, he speaks of the North as an indivisible political entity. At another time, even in the corner of his state, he is most divisive as Governor, divesting people of ethnic groups and religious beliefs other than his own, particularly the significant Christian population of all political and developmental considerations.

He came into national limelight first as Director of the Bureau of Public Enterprises and Secretary of the National Council of Privatisation and later during the second term in 2003 as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. His policy of resetting the original plan of the FCT was targeted at the demolition of business structures of those he said had no business being in Abuja to turn it to what they have made of Lagos. The regional connotation of the declaration was unmistakable.

After the Obasanjo administration, the only party where he found a comfortable bed was Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, for his burning sectarian inclinations. To impress his master, when herdsmen terrorism was beginning to gain momentum and in harassment of the Jonathan administration he declared that “any person, soldier or not, that kills a Fulani, takes a debt that will be repayable in 100 years”.

That declaration was what the terrorist herdsmen needed to be emboldened to descend on communities of the Middle Belt ethnic nationalities to dispossess them of their ancestral lands and homes.

The situation in Southern Kaduna was most devastating and on being awarded the governorship of the state in 2015, what Nasir did was to fetch the killer herdsmen across the Northern part of the West African sub region and tried to appease them with money.

He declared that the attacks on communities in the Southern part of the state were largely carried out by armed Fulani herdsmen from neighbouring Western countries, specifically from Niger, Cameron, Chad, Mali and Senegal. In a most audacious treasonable declaration the Governor said: “We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger Republic and so on to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging you to stop the killing. Some of them have been paid”.

How do you react to his odious comments on February 3 at the heat of the electioneering that Northern Christians are electorally insignificant.

What do you make of the incursion of religion intolerance into Kaduna politics by his second term Muslim-Muslim Kaduna Governorship ticket in 2019 on the ground that “even if I choose the Pope, 67 per cent of the Christians in Southern Kaduna have made up their minds that they will never vote for me” and for which he has now decided to teach them some lessons by ensuring permanent Muslim-Muslim Governorship ticket.

Any perceptive observer will discover that his current statement was not meant for the clerics he was addressing in Hausa. It is a strategic campaign for political appointments by which he ascribed the decision of the Northern Governors to support a Southern candidate to himself and Matawalle of Zamfara.

*Sola Ebiseni is the Secretary General, Afenifere and South West Coordinator OBIDATTI.