Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati has reacted to allegations made against
President Jonathan by the former Federal Capital Territory Minister, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai who accused President Jonathan of playing ethnic and religious politics as a way of diverting Nigerians’ attention from alleged bad governance going on in the country.
El-Rufai, who is now Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressive Congress (APC), also accused the President of lacking the capacity to call to order all those beating the war drum across the country.
He said that the ruling PDP is afraid of former military ruler, General Mohammadu Buhari and therefore will do everything possible to destroy him and brand him an ethnic and religious bigot.
He said: “There are many agents confronting the Nigerian nation. What is very worrying is the kind of rhetoric going on in this country, a lot of which are being sanctioned by the government. For example, whenever Asari Dokubo speaks, just know that a week earlier, he had been called to the Villa and whenever E.K Clark speaks, you know it is arranged.
“How can one ethnic group, the Ijaw, threaten the rest of us? We have 170 million people, I don’t know how many of that population make up the Ijaw nation, but I don’t think they are more than five million.
“How can five million people threaten us saying unless their son becomes President, there will be no Nigeria? Who are they to do that? The government keeps quiet when somebody says that. Of course, the expected reaction is that you have people from the North also threatening similar thing.
“What type of country do we have where there is no one to call people to order? It is sad. Again, it is this political strategy of Jonathan to always use ethnicity and religion whenever there is a problem.
“Whenever there is a big issue about Excess Crude account or subsidy issue, they bring this issue of ethnicity and religion. But I have not lost hope because I know that Nigerians can see through their pranks and their game and will vote them out in the next election. The challenge for the next President is to build trust among the various ethnic groups so that Nigeria can walk towards one direction.
“This country has gone through one civil war. I don’t know of any country that can survive two civil wars and those that are stealing crude oil; buying and stockpiling arms should know it is not the amount of arms you have that decides who wins a war. Otherwise, the USA would have won in Iraq, but they couldn’t and at the end they had to leave the Iraqi to solve their problems.
“So, they should think very deeply about what they are doing and learn from history. I know that Nigeria will survive these bad and incompetent leaders who steal during the day and drink and womanise at night instead of working for the Nigerian people”.
The former Minister described the PDP as a toxic party which must be destroyed. His words: “a party that has earned the highest oil revenue in Nigeria`s history, but has converted this oil revenue to personal wealth when our schools have remained closed and our educational system collapsing, our hospitals not functioning and fly abroad for medical treatment and send their children to school abroad, is a danger to the Nigerian nation.
“PDP has become a virus that is infesting and destroying the country and because they are not doing anything productive, they have changed our politics to that of ethnicity and religion to divert attention from their incompetence, lack of capacity and their looting of the treasury. So, PDP has become a clear and perfect danger to the existence of Nigeria as a nation and the prosperity of its people. So, it is toxic party and should be destroyed.
“The PDP has evolved from a party that was trying to be democratic in its practices and to have decency in its governance to one that has become a danger to the people of Nigeria and the only person they are afraid of, who is their nightmare, is Gen. Buhari.
“So, anytime Buhari makes a statement or does anything, the PDP machine will be at work to twist whatever he says in order to destroy his character and give the impression that he is a religious and ethnic zealot.
“There is nothing by way of fact that shows that Gen. Buhari is that kind of person. Buhari has been in public life for so long that if he was a religious bigot, or ethnic surrogate, it would have been clear. There is no way a man will rise to the position of a Major General in the Army and people will not know that he is preference for his ethnicity or religion or attained the position he has attained in life without people knowing he has all these qualities.”
He accused the PDP of trying to paint Buhari in bad light, adding, “They have tried everything possible to paint the man black and they are not even afraid that one day, they will stand before God and defend their action. That is why I say they are afraid of him more than God…”
He expressed concern about the future of the country, saying, “Nigeria has a population of about 170 million and every year, about six million babies are born. What this means as far as policy making is concerned is that within the next 20 years, those babies will need at least three million jobs because from the six million, one million will die from avoidable illnesses.
“Any responsible government should be thinking of these challenges. My concern is that not much is being done and the environment is not conducive at all. Electricity supply is going down and industries are dying while competition from China is killing the little industrial base that we have and our leaders are not making the environment attractive for investors.”
While reacting, Reuben Abati said all what El Rufai said parades him as a serial liar. “For instance, the Muslim Ummah just emerged from the Ramadan fast and the President, though a Christian, joined them in fasting and severally broke the fast with Muslims at the Presidential Villa.
Also, in the history of the existence of Nigeria as a nation, no leader has spent the quantum of funds that President Jonathan has spent on education specifically tailored for Islamic itinerant scholars known as the almajiri. In the composition of his cabinet, the President has appointed Muslims into sensitive positions and ensured a balance that has been commended by many in the Islamic fold.
But it is most curious that this allegation is coming from Nasir El-Rufai, a man who profaned the name of Jesus Christ on Twitter by tweeting a joke which is too indecent to mention in the presence of civilized persons. This same El-Rufai is the same man who in June of last year claimed that Christians were behind the bombings of their own churches rather than terrorists and were doing this to further a Christian agenda.
It is only a measure of his inconsistency that El-Rufai is today accusing the Presidency of being afraid of General Muhammadu Buhari whom the same El-Rufai said was “perpetually unelectable”. In fact, the accusation El-Rufai is now making against the President is precisely the same accusation he made against General Muhammadu Buhari on October 4 2010 when he said Buhari’s “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known”. Today, El-Rufai is serving this same Buhari.
That El-Rufai is not above lying to the media to achieve his political objective was proven in Segun Adeniyi’s book, ‘Power, Politics and Death’ when El-Rufai was quoted to have confessed in the presence of multiple witnesses who are still alive today that “There was no cabal, we created the myth to neutralise Turai”. El-Rufai sold Nigerians the dummy of a Turai cabal which was
a lie used to further his own political ends.
In any case, we have a record of what El-Rufai truly thinks of President Jonathan from the leaked secret diplomatic memo from the U.S. embassy in Abuja which revealed that just before the April 2007 Presidential election El-Rufai had told the then U.S. ambassador to Nigeria that the then Vice Presidential candidate, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was “clean and honest”.
Mallam El-Rufai’s comment on the Vice President is also unfortunate. The report quoted him as describing the administration of Arc Mohammed Namadi Sambo in Kaduna state as a disaster, purporting that the vice president as a former governor of Kaduna state incurred a huge debt profile that compelled his successor to complain. At no time did the late Governor Yakowa ever accuse the Vice President of incurring any huge debt during his tenure as Governor of Kaduna State.
For the records, when the Vice President was in charge as Governor of Kaduna state, the state never borrowed a penny from any quarters. The efforts to generate cheap funds for development, which he applied for were just recently approved by the Islamic Development Bank for the state.
It is on record also that the Vice President made judicious use of the state’s resources in reviving the already comatose railway sector, construction of a 150-million litres per day Zaria water treatment plant, the construction of a 300-bed specialist hospital and 5,000 kg grain silos for each of the three senatorial districts, the building of a games centre at the Murtala Mohammed Square and the Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna; the construction of a brand new Governor’s office at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House; the establishment of a mobile and effective security outfit codenamed Operation Yaki and the deployment of 27% of the State’s budget to education amongst other achievements.
Since El-Rufai has a history of saying the truth privately and the lie publicly it suffices to warn his current fellow co-travelers that a man who can betray those who brought him up in politics is capable of anything. Nigerians should consequently take his words with not just a pinch of salt, but a spoonful because a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
We are not the least surprised with such vituperations from Nasir El-Rufai. His public record of treachery and slander is still very fresh in the minds of Nigerians. His verbal assault on his original benefactors for worldly gain, his record of double standards and his treatment of the late Justice Bashir Sambo speak volumes of his character.
The false accounts he rendered in his recent collection of half-truths and outright lies which he accidentally titled The Accidental Public Servant further define his public image as an ungrateful, self-serving and loquacious personality”.