President
Goodluck Jonathan yesterday warned Nigerians to beware of the former
FCT Minister and Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressives
Congress,APC, Malam Nasir el-Rufai whom he described as “a double minded
and unstable man in all his ways.”
Jonathan was reacting to an interview el Rufai granted Saturday Sun
of September 14, 2013 where he said that nothing could make President
Jonathan succeed because he was grossly an incompetent leader who
doesn’t have a listening ear.
Jonathan in a statement issued in Abuja by his special assistant (New
Media), Mr Reno Omokri, called on the public to disregard el-Rufai, who
he said to be “a man in dire need of prayers and perhaps psychological
assistance.”.
Omokori said, “Beyond that, Nasir el-Rufai, who had gone into
voluntary exile under the presidency of Malam Umaru Musa Yar’Adua after
he was accused of corruption and abuse of office while he was Minister
of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), felt safe enough to return to
Nigeria as soon as President Jonathan ascended to power.
Omokri recalled that when el-Rufai returned to Nigeria a few years
back, he visited President Jonathan at the presidential villa on May 11,
2010, and was the first major political figure to call on him to
contest for the 2011 presidential election.
According to him, el-Rufai showered encomiums on Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari in the latest interview contrary to a damning conclusion on the
General in 2010.
Quoting el-Rufai thus; “I think that where Nigeria is today, it is
only someone like Buhari, with the experience of having run the country
before, and having run it along certain principles of discipline,
integrity and accountability, that Nigeria needs,” he stated.
He further recalled that the same el-Rufai had, however, in October
6, 2010, said Buhari was not a suitable person to rule the country.
Omokori Quoted him thus; “Malam 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 showed 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.”
The statement noted that, “It is obvious to all that there is more
than one personality in possession of the mind and soul of this man
called Nasir el-Rufai. Can any sane person trust the words of a man who
is so unstable? Today, el-Rufai, perhaps banking on what he thinks is
the short memory of Nigerians, is attempting to rewrite history. But it
is such a difficult task to paint the truth with a lie.
“Nasir el-Rufai wanted something from the President which was why he
visited him at the presidential villa to heap unsolicited praise on the
president in 2010. When he did not get what he wanted, he became bitter
and since the days of yore when the fox that could not get the grapes
tagged them ‘sour grapes’ to mask its frustration, it has always been
the habit of persons who cannot compete on the basis of ideas to give a
dog a bad name in order to hang it.
“Thus, el-Rufai, having run out of ideas, has tagged this administration as ‘incompetent,” he said
