El-Rufai: New emperor of divisive politics

By OBINNA EZUGWU

Judging by his accomplishments in professional life and in public service, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna State governor comes around as a cerebral individual, a technocrat and indeed an astute politician. Yet, it has come as a surprise to many that despite these accomplishments, not to mention an enviable academic prowess, the governor has proved to be a man quite incapable of broad mindedness, and who barely attempts to hide his religious and ethnicity influenced biases in his dealings, more apparently, as governor.

In three and half years of his stewardship, he has effectively created a religious gulf in Kaduna. Never, in the democratic history of the state, some say, had it been more divided along ethnic and religious lines, with attendant crisis and persistent loss of lives.  Before he return of democracy, Kaduna had experienced some level of sectarian disturbances; but several governors after then had tried to build bridges of consensus and understanding along those cleavages.

“The crisis in the state is fueled by his actions,” said Chief Abia Onyike, Ebonyi based political analyst. “He is proving to be the most bigoted individual to ever come into leadership in this country. It is on account of that that Kaduna state has been mired in crisis ever since he became governor. It is because of his mentality and arrogance.”

Now regarded as a master of divisiveness, El-Rufai has perhaps set out to prove a point; a point that in Kaduna, Muslims can win without the Christians. By choosing a fellow Muslim, Hadiza Balarabe, from Sanga local government area, as deputy governorship candidate in a state that has historically maintained a delicate political balance between the Muslim North and Christian South, with the former often producing governor and the later deputy governor, El-Rufai has set out to alter the state’s political equation. And it could be a recipe for deeper religious tensions.

The decision has remained a subject of political debate, and like every topic that has religious colouration, adherents of both religions often view it wearing their religious lenses. He had appealed to the conservative Muslim population, but has infuriated Christians. The 2019 governorship election in Kaduna has the potentiality of turning into a religious rivalry. And it can only mean bad news in an already polarised clime.

On Tuesday, the governor came out to defend the choice as ‘best’ of all considered candidates. The   governor who spoke when a delegation from Sanga local government paid him a thank you visit for choosing their daughter, maintained that he consulted President Muhammadu Buhari before settling for Balarabe among 32 candidates for the deputy governorship position.

He said those criticising him for his choice are people who never voted for him, adding that the government house is not a place of worship but a place of work.

“Then we started selection and dropping of names based on merit. From 32 manes to 17 to 12 and then five names -three males and two females,” he said. At that point, and as usual of us, when we are taking serious decisions, we consult President Muhammadu Buhari, because he is the only person I know that has worked in the army, he has been governor, minister and president.

“So, when I told him, he said anyone older than you should be dropped, then one name was dropped, remaining two men and two women, then he said, since you are interested in a woman pick the best woman. That was how I picked Hadiza.”

But for a state like Kaduna, and going by his antecedents, not many will accept his explanation as having merit. Indeed, having, in many people’s reckoning, helped to promote religious divisions in Kaduna by his often convenient resort to blame games in times of crisis, his decision naturally comes around as one informed on religion, not competence.

“Everybody knows that it (the choice of Muslim deputy governor) is politically motivated; everybody knows that,” popular Islamic cleric based in the state told Premium Times on Tuesday. “What I’m saying is that you look at the time, the situation, the culture, the environment before you make such move.

“What I feel is that it’s not right, especially coming a week after some people lost their lives innocently. Somebody is killed on the road, why; because of his identity.

“So, immediately after such crisis, we don’t need another thing that will create animosity between people that are destined to live together – and I specifically said indigenous people.”

Kaduna is a state with a ‘rich’ history of religious violence. From the Zanfo-Kataf crisis of the early 90s to the recent herdsmen crisis, the state has had more than a fair share of the ever expanding frontiers of mindless bloodshed. And with a governor seemingly bent on escalating an already dire situation, danger could yet be lurking.

“He is laying a bad foundation for Kaduna; a dangerous precedent,” said Adeniyi Alimi Suleiman, executive chairman, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ). “You can even look at the way he is harassing Shehu Sani, it’s not normal.”

El-Rufai has more often than not, expanded dragnet of controversies beyond Kaduna. The former FCT Minister who is hardly out of the news, often for controversial tweets and submissions in recent years, stirred another one few days ago when he called vice presidential candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Peter Obi, an ethnic bigot for confining him in a hotel during the 2014 governorship election in Anambra.

In a tweet, on his twitter handle fortnight ago, the governor wrote: ‘Peter Obi is a tribal bigot. He was widely quoted on national television that the SSS was right to detain me for 48 hours in an hotel in 2014 on the grounds that ”El-Rufai has no business being in Anambra State as it is not Katsina State”! I sued the SSS and was awarded N4m damages.’

As expected, the tweet generated reactions or even outrage. The irony of a governor now largely seen as being driven by religious bias turning round to refer to another as a bigot was not lost on many people.

“An ethnic bigot is a lesser evil than a divisively religious one,” Senator Sani had tweeted in response to the governor. Sani, alongside other Kaduna senators has been at loggerheads with the governor since they refused to support his move to take a $350 million World Bank loan. The governor has since denied Sani the APC senate ticket for Kaduna Central.

“He shouldn’t be calling Peter Obi a bigot, he is actually the person who can be regarded as a bigot,” Onyike said. “He has demonstrated bigotry in his views every now and then. Unfortunately, it’s only in Nigeria that such people will be allowed to parade the corridors of power.”

In a statement last week, the Northern Nigeria chapter of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), maintained that going by the governor’s pedigree, he lacked moral right to call anybody a bigot

“Happenings in our dear Kaduna State for over three years now, especially some recent statements by the governor, have compelled me to speak as a citizen and a stakeholder who believes in the unity and diversity of Nigeria,” Rev. Joseph Hayab of the religious association said on Monday.

“It seems that Governor el-Rufai takes pleasure in making bad and inciting comments about others but unable to bear or reason that his leadership style is worse than that of those he is quick to accuse.

“When some Christian leaders years back complained about how he (el-Rufai), made mockery of Jesus on his Twitter handle, it seemed then that they deliberately accused him of such a recklessness for political reasons, but little did we realise that such inflammatory comments were el-Rufai’s trademark.

“Since el-Rufai became the governor of Kaduna State, many of his utterances have been either to insult or denigrate some individuals or group of people.”

But the governor has had his own backers too, and they are more than a handful. It’s season of politics. Nigerians will return to the polls next year. Obi is in a joint ticket with the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar. The ticket poses threat to President Buhari’s bid to return to power.

In view of this, one could understand el-Rufai’s submission as a ploy to de-market the former Anambra state governor in the North. Given the ethnic and religious based politics played in the country, it is sure to sell. And one would only expect similar attacks on Obi since it may prove difficult, if not ridiculous to begin to make allegations of corruption at this stage.

“It’s obviously aimed at gaining political advantage,” Suleiman said. “But it’s a dangerous way to play politics. We don’t need to harass one another or use tribal blackmail to score an advantage.

“Say what you have done or what you want to do, if people like it, they will vote for you. It will be   dangerous when people in high office promote tribal or religious sentiments in our politics.”

The ruling APC has had a bit of an obsession with ‘hate speech.’ President Buhari had on several occasions vowed to jail those found guilty of hate speeches. For Suleiman, the Kaduna governor’s tweet qualified as hate speech and if the ruling party is serious about curbing it, they should not condone the governor.

“It is hate speech,” he said. “Politics is not an avenue for people to curse or harass others. El-Rufai is a sitting governor; he should give respect to that post because he doesn’t represent himself, but the entire people of Kaduna.”

Obi had meanwhile, dismissed the governor’s claims, explaining that whilst he served as governor, he worked with six police commissioners, all of whom were from the North and wondered if el-Rufai could entrust his personal security into the hands of any Igbo.

On the allegation that he stopped El-Rufai from moving around on the 2014 election-day, Obi insisted that even as governor, he was not meant to move around as it was illegal.

“I went to my own local government to vote and back to Awka,” he said. “El Rufai came to Anambra State on an election day and said he wants to move around the Local governments. The state security services said you can’t move around. Not even the Governor is allowed to move around.

“When I was asked after that in an interview I said now listen: I, Peter wouldn’t want to be in Kaduna, for the same reason on an election day. In my eight years in office, go and ask them how many people were killed in my state the way people are being killed in his state”.

El Rufai on marble

Mallam el-Rufai is not new to controversies. Indeed, he is a man drenched in the dirty water of doublespeak. And if not for the seriousness and weight of his tirades, one would only have a good laugh at their contradiction and inconsistencies. The Kaduna governor lives in full, the dictum that in politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

On Goodluck Jonathan and Christians

It would be ironic that President Buhari, for whom el-Rufai in 2013, defied decorum threw morality to the winds by mocking the founder of the Christian faith when he noted that: “if Jesus criticises Jonathan’s govt, Maku/Abati/Okupe will say he slept with Mary Magdalene,” and whom he now promotes as the best Nigeria can offer is the same Buhari he dismissed as incompetent-never- do- well less than three years prior whilst still in PDP in 2010.

Of late, a statement credited to the former governor wherein he attacked Buhari as being the only ex military general to fail all his exams has been trending.

On Buhari

“Pa Muhammadu Buhari (72) is the only Nigerian senior military officer that failed all his senior military examinations in the history of Nigerian Military,” El-Rufai reportedly wrote.

“If you check the official names of officers, the likes of IBB, Idiagbon, Diya, Danjuma, Akhigbe, Abdulsalami, Aikhomu, etc. you see suffix, FSS, Psc, MNi. Pa Muhammadu Buhari has none. He failed the Command & Staff College exams and all other military examinations. (Psc means Pass Staff College)”

But it was even in a statement he released as perhaps a follow up to the submission that was the real hit below the president’s belt.

In the statement he titled, “El Rufai: Buhari Should Stick To Facts,” published on various media platforms on October 04, 2010, the Kaduna governor had attacked Buhari, describing him as unelectable on account of his nepotistic tendencies, which he said has continued to serve as a warning to many.

“Mallam 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,” the statement read.

“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 an defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cower the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history.”

But fast-forward to 2018, the same el-Rufai has found love with Buhari and for him, anyone who doesn’t speak well of the president is indulging in bad behaviour and should therefore not be allowed to hold political office.

In justifying his decision to deny Senator Sani the ruling party’s Senate ticket despite the insistence by the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole led party leadership, el-Rufai noted that in a letter to the president dated October 2, that the senator called the president’s three years tenure as a failure and also ridiculed his medical trip to London.

“When your excellency traveled to London in April 2018 for medical consultation, Shehu Sani ridiculed it on Facebook as ‘Voyage to London, Season 3,” the governor wrote.

“In May 2018, he lamented what he said was Buhari’ s three years of failure to protect human lives. In the same month, he wrote that ‘Baba should protect his testicle from any man who always bends down to greet him.”

Self contradictions

El-Rufai has displayed an amazing capacity for self contradiction. He promoted bigotry in one breath and in another he attacks others for being bigots.

After clashes between settlers and natives in some parts of northern Nigeria a few years ago, he tweeted: “We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes.”

It was a tweet with all the trappings of ethnic bigotry. But once he became governor, he turned around to berate those who criticize his policies as governor of promoting bigotry.

“We have noticed that there are groups and persons that have in the past made a living by promoting prejudice and specialising in incitement. They distort public discourse, corrupting every issue, policy or appointment as an outlet to vent religious, ethnic and sectional viewpoints,” he said in an address at Khituk Gwong in Fadan Kagoma in Jema’a Local Government of Kaduna State on 5th March 2016.

The killing of nearly three hundred Shiites in late 2015 in Kaduna under Buhari was justified by the governor, and not even the continued detention of the group’s leader, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and the continued killing of Shiites by the current administration have attracted a whimper from him.

However, in 2014, under Goodluck Jonathan, when similar encounter between the military and Shiites led to the killing of El-Zakzaky’s three zones, he tweeted that the “Genocidal Jonathanian Army Kills Again.” The death of three in 2014 was genocide but the killing of hundreds a year later was necessary.

Yet, the governor who ‘prays’ every now and then with President Buhari had in 2014, displayed President Jonathan’s photo praying and dismissed it as ” many prayers of the lazy, docile, incompetent, clueless, hopeless, useless leader.”