Politics
Rumble in the North: El-Rufai, Ribadu begin fight for 2031
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, has in some people’s reckoning, built a reputation for being opportunistic with his loyalty in politics, and for strong critics, like Hajiya Nàja’atu Mohammed, he’s also “a pathological liar,” and “shameless” person, who says things only “when it suits him” and doesn’t deserve to be listened to.
But when during an interview on Arise TV on Monday last week, he accused Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser of being behind his current travails on account of his 2031 presidential ambition, not many will disagree with him.
Power is expected to return to the North in 2031, when the South would have completed its eight years, and although it’s still six years away, intense brinkmanship has begun, and nowhere is this more obvious than the current travails of El-Rufai, who despite being expressly urged by President Tinubu to stay back and work for his government, was humiliated after being initially nominated as minister. Worse still, he’s facing probe over alleged N432bn embezzlement during his stewardship in Kaduna.
“Somebody wants to destroy my reputation,” El-Rufai said during the interview on Monday. “Why? Because Nuhu Ribadu wants to be president in 2031. He has to eliminate every northerner that he thinks is in the radar. That’s what is going on.”
In Kaduna where he served as governor for eight years, and succeeded in handing over to his anointed successor, Senator Uba Sani, despite stiff challenge by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Isa Ashiru Kudan, it did not take long before he became a haunted man, with N432bn alleged fraud indictment by the state assembly, and calls for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to step in. But the former governor, who denies the allegations, says it’s still about the ambition of Ribadu.
“If the state House of Assembly is investigating my administration and they have questions, I think the basic principle of fair hearing requires that I be invited. I was never invited,” he said
“The EFCC has done its investigation and hasn’t charged anybody because there’s nothing there. But the ICPC, whose chairman is the brother and a friend of ours called Farooq Adamu Aliyu – a very close friend of Nuhu Ribadu, reports to him on this.
“This project of ‘destroy Nasir El-Rufai’ is Nuhu Ribadu’s conception. He is the architect and he is the builder of that project, and he is the one working with Uba Sani to implement it. So far, it has been frustrating for them because they have not been able to find anything.”
Ribadu, however, immediately clapped back, noting in a statement that he never discussed intention to run for president in 2031 with anybody.
Reacting to El-Rufai’s allegation in the statement issued via his official X handle on the same Monday, Ribadu said he was not collaborating with anyone to disparage or malign El-Rufai in any way.
“My attention has been drawn to the interview granted by Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Monday evening. If my silence wouldn’t be misconstrued as consent, I would have ignored him. I am too preoccupied with my current assignment to get into a media fight with Nasir El-Rufai or anyone else,” he said.
“Despite the incessant baiting and attacks I have never spoken ill of Nasir on record anywhere. This is out of respect for our past association and our respective families. I will not start today. I, however, urge the public to disregard El-rufai’s statements against me.
“For the avoidance of doubt, I want to put it on record that I have never discussed running for president in 2031 with anybody. All my focus and energy are geared completely towards the advancement of Nigeria and the success of President Tinubu’s administration.
“I therefore ask Nasir El-Rufai to allow me to face my onerous national assignment just as I do not bother myself with his own affairs.”
Ribadu’s Plot
The 64-year-old Ribadu, in his reply to El-Rufai, his one-time political ally, did not deny nursing presidential ambition in 2031. Indeed, the Adamawa born politician, is said to be actively strategizing for 2031, being seemingly the favourite candidate of President Tinubu.
Both Ribadu and El-Rufai, who had begun to nurse presidential ambitions in 2005, had campaigned vigorously for Tinubu in the lead-up to the 2023 election. Tinubu, the then All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, is on record to have pleaded with El-Rufai, during the seventh edition of KadInvest, an annual event organized by the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency, in October 2022, to defer his plans to travel overseas to further his education after his tenure as governor, so he could help his anticipated government.
Tinubu on that occasion, in a slip of tongue, told El-Rufai that he had the capacity to turn a rotten situation into a bad one. “We’re not going to let you run away. Your vision, creativity, and resilience in turning a rotten situation to a bad one is necessary at this critical time; that’s why we are here today,” Tinubu had told El-Rufai.
Tinubu would eventually nominate El-Rufai as a minister, but things were soon to take a different turn for the former Kaduna governor. He was promptly screened out, with security concerns cited as the reason. Although that sounded plausible on account of his poor record as governor, during which bandits held sway, even as he was accused of pursuing ethnic and religious agenda against the Christians of Southern Kaduna, Business Hallmark gathered that the decision to screen him out was part of the plot to whittle him down politically.
Indeed, the battle for influence between his camp and that of Ribadu began as soon as Tinubu was declared the winner of the presidential election of 2023. There were subtle campaigns to prevent Ribadu’s appointment as NSA, which Tinubu ignored in the end. And having been appointed, Ribadu, it was gathered, used his position to influence Tinubu to drop El-Rufai.
“Tinubu took sides with Ribadu because he saw him as a more reliable person with less baggage, unlike El-Rufai,” a source close to the president told Business Hallmark.
During his appearance on Arise TV on Monday, the former governor said it was Tinubu who didn’t want him as minister, while absorbing the National Assembly that ‘screened him out’ of blame. He’s mostly right, and indeed, for observers, while he has penchant for being untruthful, nobody could argue with his claim that his travails are about the 2031 presidency.
“When El-Rufai, being a Nigerian politician, tells you good morning, you have to check your clock to be sure it is morning. A lot of what he said during his interview with Arise has to be fact-checked,” said Cheta Nwanze, analyst and Lead Partner at SBM Intelligence, on News Central.
“But on his allegation that Nuhu Ribadu has ambition for 2031, I would agree with him on that. There is no Nigerian politician worth his salt that doesn’t have an ambition. For people to come and deny that on behalf of Ribadu , that is being deceitful.”
Ambition for Presidency
Ribadu first ran unsuccessfully for office of the President in 2011 as the candidate of the defunct Action Congress (AC), but his designs for power could be said to have begun six years earlier in 2005 when himself, EL-Rufai, amongst other members of the then President Obasanjo economic team reportedly held a meeting in London where they finalized plans that not only would one of them succeed Obasanjo in 2007, but also members of the team would continue to produce presidents for the next 24 years.
A second session of the meeting was said to have been held in Kaduna very early in 2006 to finalize strategies, with the plan being to have El-Rufai as Obasanjo’s immediate successor. This was after the duo had allegedly helped to put a permanent wage between Obasanjo and the then vice president, Atiku Abubakar, who indeed, brought them into the government.
Some members of the team including, allegedly Femi Fani Kayode, ex Aviation Minister; Akin Osuntokun, former Presidential Adviser, Media, and Mallam Uba Sani, former special assistant on public affairs, were reportedly sent to Obasanjo, who was at time in Ota, Ogun State, to inform him of what they presented as a patriotic decision to ensure his economic reform agenda continued even when he leaves office.
However, Obasanjo, who had Umaru Yar’Adua, then Katsina State governor, in mind, turned their choice of El-Rufai down, only telling them that it was God that would decide.
When eventually they got to find out that Obasanjo had Yar’Adua in mind, Ribadu, who was then the EFCC chairman, reportedly came up with another agenda to rubbish Yar’adua’s ‘corruption-free credential’ in order to create a path for El-Rufai.
What then followed was charges of fraud and corruption against the Katsina state government in 2006, with EFCC agents swooping on the state government officials, including many of the governor’s aides. Yar’Adua , meanwhile, was aware that he was the actual target and ran to Obasanjo, who was overseas at the time. Obasanjo intervened, it was said, and threatened to sack Ribadu, which forced him to backtrack.
Meanwhile, because Atiku had pulled away to pursue his presidential ambition under ACN, Obasanjo, probably concerned that they may back him, convinced Ribadu, El-Rufai and other members of the clique, to support the Yar’Adua ticket, with the promise that they would still be key members of his government.
They would then use the opportunity to scheme out Peter Odili, then Rivers State governor alleged to be corrupt, for Goodluck Jonathan, his Bayelsa State counterpart, who had only recently replaced Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, an Atiku ally, who had been impeached in 2005, for the vice presidential slot.
However, Yar’Adua did not forgive them, particularly the duo of Ribadu and El-Rufai, and once he took power, he moved against them, and both fled the country to overseas, from where they became vocal with their opposition to the new president. They would later return with the death of Yar’Adua in 2010 to continue to oppose his successor, Jonathan.
While El-Rufai joined the emergent All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, going on to become Kaduna governor in 2015, Ribadu left AC to join PDP to run for Adamawa governor in 2015 but failed in that effort. He then joined the APC later in 2019.
Muhammadu Buhari, from Katsina, who became president under APC in 2015, completed his eight years in 2023 and handed over to Tinubu. Power is expected to return to the North in 2031, after the South would have completed eight years, and in anticipation of that return, Ribadu and El-Rufai, being prospects, have apparently begun to scheme. El-Rufai, who has been schemed out of APC, has evidently begun to seek an alternative platform.
Plot against Tinubu
The former Kaduna governor, though not officially out of APC, has been consulting with leading opposition figures in the North, including Atiku, who he met recently and praised for spearheading economic reforms during the administration of President Obasanjo.
“Nobody gives Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the credit for economic policy making under the Obasanjo administration. Many of the things we did, we did under his leadership,” El-Rufai stated during a condolence visit to the family of the late elder statesman and Niger Delta advocate Edwin Clark. “Maybe because we don’t write about it, and people don’t read history, we tend to forget. We only remember negative things. Maybe it’s part of human nature.”
After the condolence visit, the ex-governor and Atiku observed the Juma’at prayer together.
Besides Atiku, El-Rufai, who also recently called for an alliance between the North and the South South to “rescue Nigeria,” in 2027, has met other Northern figures including Shehu Gabam, Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Hamza Al-Mustapha, the ex-aide to the late Sani Abacha, among others, apparently with a view to building an alliance against Tinubu ahead of 2027.
On Saturday, El-Rufai met with the Kaduna State executive committee of the PDP. He was accompanied by his former Chief of Staff, Bashir Saidu. The closed-door meeting took place in Kaduna. A day later, on Sunday, El-Rufai held a meeting with the former National Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Adamu. at the latter’s residence in Keffi, Nasarawa State.
Meanwhile, last week, Ajibola Basiru, the APC National Secretary, accused him of stoking an ethnic agenda against Tinubu over his failure to get a cabinet appointment.
Basiru said they no longer pay attention to his activities after the party discovered he was “an overrated ethnic champion,” who is always ready to pitch northern politicians against their southern counterparts.
Basiru slammed El-Rufai over his continued posture as the mouthpiece of the North and the recent fraternity with top opposition figures.
He said, “I have told you before and am still telling you again that we are concerned about our affairs in the APC. For parties in Nigeria, it is free exit and free entry. So, anybody is free to exit if he wants to exit. But we will not dignify such moves with any comment for now.
“We understand that sectional politics is what makes some people tick. Unfortunately, he (El-Rufai) is not thinking about the development of the country but is stoking up the ethnic nationality agenda. This South versus North posture shows that all along, he has been overrated as a person.”
Hinting at El-Rufai’s grievance, Basiru noted, “The only thing we want to say is that governance is a serious matter, and nobody has the birthright to be an appointee of government. There are more than 180 million Nigerians, and quite a number of them are qualified.
“So, if you don’t have an opportunity to serve in a government, it does not mean that you should be going around and trying to become an emergency activist. As I said before, politics is a free exit and free entry. The APC is solid, and we are forging ahead.”