3 hours Ago
In his latest tirade about the state of the nation (clear evidence of aggravated trauma following the gut punch he received from Abuja when the Senate rejected his nomination as a ministerial nominee), Nasir el-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna State and election-time supporter of Bola Tinubu, has described the Tinubu administration as the worst Federal Government in Nigeria. He sees the government as the most corrupt and most intolerant in the history of Nigeria. Dripping with sanctimonious aplomb, his jejune, self-serving remarks were delivered with the gravity of a prophetic revelation.
Yet statements like El-Rufai’s are additional evidence of why Nigerians should get wiser and stop taking politicians too seriously when they pursue their personal interest in the name of the collective. Although he did not go that far but our accidental public servant could well have had President Bola Tinubu in mind with his description of the government he now leads. As his anger tends to grow with each outburst, it’s a matter of time before he gets to that point.
El-Rufai is well-known for wishing death on his opponents, who could be anyone he happens to disagree with over matters as mundane as the religious or political beliefs they espouse. This is the petty depth to which his famed intelligence, like that of others weighed down by the malady of blind arrogance but who presently seek to shepherd the Northern electorate by the nose, could lead him. As he has openly admitted, he was not always a supporter of Tinubu.
In one memorable instance, he offered to teach those perceived to be under the political bondage of the Lagos landlord how to wean themselves off the breast milk of their reputed godfather. Things remained this way until his personal and the enlightened self-interest of the North aligned. He ended up in the camp of the man he liked to hate and gorged himself on his vomit by lending him his betenoire support in the 2023 presidential election within the larger context of championing a shift in power to the South after an eight-year, Northern Nigeria-led presidency.
The one-time minister is known to have savaged the reputation of every one of his mentors he had once supported for the presidency. From Atiku Abubakar under whose tutelage many believed he cut his political teeth, to Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, El-Rufai has some nasty testimonial of his relationship with and impression of each man. Two of them, Atiku and Obasanjo, have paid him their own tributes in kind.
Buhari, forever stiff-lipped and before whom El-Rufai likes to plunge into a worshipful crouch he wants the world to take as respectful greeting, has learned to keep both his distance and his counsel when matters come to the foul-mouthed instigator of identity politics. He demonstrated this recently when after an El-Rufai visit with him to announce his exit from the All Progressives Congress, he clarified that he was still a staunch member of the party and a supporter of Tinubu. El-Rufai had claimed he had gone to inform Buhari of his planned exit from the APC.
He had by that sought to create the impression the former president not only endorsed his exit but was probably himself on the verge of leaving the party amid the red herring of the marginalisation of the North that El-Rufai and his cohorts were promoting. His vituperation against Tinubu deserves to be watched closely for the manner it shows up Nigerian politicians as mere rent seekers out for their own pockets. The Tinubu team probably knew how things could end between them and El-Rufai, going by his antecedents, and so decided to draw the first blood before they were stabbed in the back.
A minister, El-Rufai after a year or two under a Tinubu administration, could for some obscure reason resign and leave in a huff. Then would he be lionised in the usually shallow Nigerian way as a man of high principles with many not realising he was only grandstanding. Like an Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, less than a month out of office but is already talking in the sanitised manner of an alien lately descended from space, grousing and threatening retribution against an administration he just left.
The Tinubu team probably has second thoughts about El-Rufai and decided to use and dump him before he plays them. He had clearly been inconsolable but decided to wait for about a year, time enough to lick his wound, before launching his attack on the APC. He started by making the rounds of media organisations and posting on multiple social media platforms.
His initially mild criticisms trailed the beaten path of attacking party leaders he called semi-literate and half-illiterate for deviating from the founding principles of an APC he said lacked internal democracy. He expanded the latitude of his excoriation by accusing the APC (read Tinubu and company) of sowing dissension in and destroying opposition parties. His diatribe gets more severe with each new release, including ones purveyed in the name of faceless surrogates, all leading up to his grand re-entry into the media space with his Arise Prime Time interview.
Matters came to a head last week with an outburst in which he called the Tinubu administration the most corrupt and the worst in the country’s history. And El-Rufai against the evidence before us wants the world to believe he is a patriot and that his frenzied attacks have nothing to do with his ego being bruised after he was passed up for appointment? He has said so and we can all attest to the fact that Tinubu had said he wanted him in his government. He was, nevertheless, passed up.
A situation he finds intolerable. His initial reason for opting out of consideration for appointment after security concerns were raised about him was that he was going back to the Netherlands for his PhD. He needed no appointment, he proclaimed, but he has remained firmly around and everywhere, rallying the Northern political troops.
He boasted he has been minister, governor and now has nothing more to prove with public appointment. But the man doth protest too much and his wife was probably the first to observe this when she called their quarrelsome son to order for criticising the Tinubu administration. She had asked him if he would have been that critical had his father been appointed minister.
Given his eleventh hour push in the election that made Tinubu president, El-Rufai deserved the position promised him by Tinubu. But after he was scorned, his silence would have been far more dignified and golden than the infantile tantrums he throws around, kicking and flailing, like a spoiled brat. The post Nasir el-Rufai doth protest too much, by Rotimi Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.
.
