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.

The Hypocrisy Of President Buhari And El-Rufai, His Mini Me

By Reno Omokri

 With President Muhammadu Buhari's lawyer's ₦500,000 'gift' to Justice Adeniyi Ademola while the certificate case was being tried before that judge and with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation's Grasscuttergate scandal, can we all stop pretending and accept that the anti corruption war is dead?

*President Buhari and Gov El-Rufai

I believe I now know the reason why God allowed President Buhari to come back to power. It was to expose him for who he really is. Not a saint, but a hypocrite!

A hypocrite of the highest order. A so called anti corruption crusader who writes letters to cover his corrupt Secretary to the Government of the Federation and whose lawyer gives gifts to a justice that is being tried for collecting gifts from others. Do as I say, not as I do!

Things were already bad enough until the President's spokesman released his statement trying to justify the 'gift'! 

When Femi Adesina, President Muhammadu Buhari's spokesman, says PMB's lawyers ₦500,000 payment to Justice Ademola was a 'gift' not a bribe he must think that Nigerians are on the bottom of the ladder in the rational thinking food chain!

So if I take a bribe and call it a 'gift', according to Femi Adesina, it automatically transforms from corruption to 'gift'? So President Buhari believes in the Transformation Agenda after all! Who would have thought so! 

So why can President Buhari's lawyer give gifts but Andrew Yakubu cannot accept 'gift'? The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission should just release everybody they are trying because they took 'gifts' not bribe. After all, President Buhari and his lawyer have shown us the way!

The Justice Ademola that is currently being tried is accused of taking bribes because people gave him gifts. So why were their gifts proceeds of corruption and Lawyer Awodein's (Buhari's lawyer) a proceed of friendship?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a bribe is defined thus:

Gov El-Rufai, Hypocrisy, And Executive Incitement

By Moses Ochonu

A couple of my interlocutors have written to say that Audu Maikori deserves to face justice for sending out a false tweet. I have no issue with that. There is a new law in Kaduna against incitement and if he is in violation of it and the state's prosecutors feel they can build a case, he should be prosecuted.

*Nasir El-Rufai 

But here are the issues that the few —yes, few— El-Rufai worshippers and those who share his ethno-religious and supremacist inclinations are avoiding and want to deflect by latching onto Maikori, the entertainment entrepreneur having become their convenient escapist scapegoat.

1. Is it not curious that all those arrested so far (Christians and Muslims) under this new anti-incitement law are El-Rufai's critics? Is it not equally curious that the governor's supporters who have been making incendiary statements and inflaming the Southern Kaduna crisis with their comments in support of the herdsmen killers and against the people of Southern Kaduna have not been arrested under this law? It appears that as long as you support the governor and join him in demonizing the people of Southern Kaduna and their leaders, your incitement carries no legal consequence. But if you criticize the governor's handling of this crisis or the Shia killings in Zaria and you say something that can be remotely interpreted to violate the capacious anti-incitement law, you get arrested. In this way, the anti-incitement law seems to be functioning as a tool for silencing El-Rufai's critics, an instrument for furthering his tyranny.

2. Is it not hypocritical and ironic for a governor who is the most inciting politician in Nigeria, and whose actions and comments have rendered him a biased umpire in the Southern Kaduna crisis and stoked the conflict, is arresting others for the offense of incitement? And I am not just talking about his well known pre-Governorship tweets at a time when he seemed to have been aiming for the award of the most divisive and inciting politician in Nigeria. I am talking also about his ONGOING incitement. During this crisis, El-Rufai has blamed the Southern Kaduna people, the victims of sustained killings, for bringing the genocide upon themselves by provoking foreign Fulani herdsmen. Just two weeks ago, El-Rufai was on Channels TV, asserting without a shred of evidence, that Southern Kaduna secular and church leaders were encouraging the killing of their own people because they were profiting from it!! This was coming from the governor of the state, but somehow we are supposed to see a false tweet from a citizen's account as a greater threat to peace in Southern Kaduna. A law against incitement may be a good thing if it can be enforced even-handedly (which el-Rufai has shown that it cannot), but a politician who is guilty of serial incitement, a politician indirectly complicit in the ongoing crisis, and a politician who is the inciter-in-chief in Kaduna does not have the credibility to be the enforcer or promoter of such a law.

Gov El-Rufai Should First Arrest Himself

By Moses Ochonu

Governor Nasir El-Rufai has caused Audu Maikori to be arrested for sending a tweet that relied on false information about an attack that never occurred, a tweet for which he has since apologized. Maikori has been a critic of the governor's handling of the Southern Kaduna killings.

*Gov Nasir El-Rufai 

El-Rufai's latest canard to defend his tyranny and intolerance for critique is what he calls "a policy of consequence." Very chic. The problem is that not a single one of the foreign herdsmen he says are responsible for killing hundreds of Southern Kaduna people's have been arrested for murder. Not a single one of them has faced this "policy of consequences."

In fact instead of being arrested, El-Rufai rewarded them with handsome payments to silence their guns. Yet Southern Kaduna folks like Maikori who complain about their menace, even if relying on unreliable information produced in the haze of crisis, are hounded into detention. It's different strokes for different folks.

We have a situation now where the governor prioritizes what he nebulously calls the offense of incitement over that of mass murder. But even here, he is being disingenuous. Governor El-Rufai is the inciter-in-chief in Kaduna. Just the other day, he was on Channels TV accusing Southern Kaduna elders and church leaders of encouraging and profiting from the murder of their own people! What could be more inciting than this recklessly incendiary statement?

Buhari, Halt The Genocide In Southern Kaduna Now!

By Ayodele Adio
Shortly after reading through Audu Maikori’s narration of the tragedy befalling the beautiful people of southern Kaduna, I was left in a state of limbo as to why the Nigerian state has consistently failed to protect its most vulnerable, why the life of the average Nigerian isn’t worth as much as that of a cow and why the agency of government saddled with the prime responsibility for maintaining internal security has become the lead cast in this ridiculous show of shenanigans? 

 

*Buhari 

One would have thought that the imposition of a 24 hour curfew might give way for the dust to settle, and even if the people of southern Kaduna were not planning a merry Christmas, a peaceful one would surely have sufficed. Sadly, that wasn’t to be as a group of militia herdsmen brazenly decimated a village named Goska, leaving about a dozen people dead and hundreds homeless. Typical of such attacks was the fact that the militia herdsmen met no resistance from any of our security operatives and as I write this piece not a single arrest has been made.

What is more worrisome is that the culprits have been identified as foreigners who have a score to settle with the people of southern Kaduna. How low can we go as a nation? That bandits from neighbouring countries can stroll into our country, spit on our territorial integrity, massacre our people and then demand monetary compensation, only to be insulted by Femi Adesina that the President doesn’t need to speak on the killings as the governor of Kaduna state is already on top of things, as if when his boss sends condolence messages to France and the United states when attacked by terrorists, their own governments aren’t on top of the matter.

The Global terrorism index has the Fulani herdsmen ranked as the 4th most deadliest terror group on earth today having killed thousands of innocent Nigerians. How this constantly fails to attract the urgent attention of Mr. President is completely beyond me, not even a sigh of empathy or a show of solidarity with the people. This is awfully shameful, insensitive and irresponsible from a country that prides itself in being the big brother of black Africa. We seem to be more worried about a group of people going home to their families to spend the Christmas holidays than we are about an armed militia, sacking communities, and wrecking havoc in Kaduna, Nassarawa, Adamawa, Benue, Zamfara, and Enugu.