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Why El-Rufai Will Never Be President

Jide Ayobolu

jideayobolu@yahoo.co.uk

November 1, 2006

It is no longer news that Mallam Nasir El-Rufai is very desperate to be the president of the federal republic of Nigeria come 2007, that is why he has said repeatedly that the person that must succeed president Olusegun Obasanjo must be someone that will continue with the reform programmes of the present administration, it is in this context that the reform team talked about paradigm shift, even when the so-called reforms are not having any positive, desirable and appreciable impact on the people. But what kind of president will El-Rufai be? First the point must be made than 150,000 school children have been deprived the golden opportunity of benefiting from the basic education in the Federal capital territory (FCT), as a result of the ongoing demolition exercise in the satellite towns and villages by El-Rufai. A number of private schools were demolished without provisions for alternative for pupils of the affected schools to continue their studies, while the number of those in public schools has drastically reduced due to the facts that only a negligible number of non-indigenes are living in areas where indigenes were spared the demolition. Most public schools have within the past months experienced a steady decline in the population of students, some are battling to cope with an unprecedented influx of new students as parents who were victims of the demolition have been forced to relocate their families to neighbouring settlements within and outside the FCT including Mararaba, Masaka, Ado and Keffi, all in Nasarawa State. There is serious concern that as more settlements fall to El-Rufai’s bulldozers, the number of drop-outs in the FCT is bound to increase beyond imagination.

Apart from this, over 3.5million people have been displaced in as result of the demolition exercise of mallam El-Rufai, without providing any alternatives whatsoever, so many people died in the process, court orders were flagrantly disregarded, compensations were not paid, people were not given prior notice before demolition exercises commenced, a lot of people were subjected to the wickedness, heartlessness and lack of sound judgment in the display of arbitrary use of power. In fact, the point must be made that many journalists who are very poorly paid but struggle to build houses for themselves have their abodes demolition in a very atrocious manner. Some of the houses were pulled down the very week children were supposed to start their examinations; some lost everything they had worked for in the process. This is the same thing he did about commercial motor bike operators, drove them out of Abuja, deprived them of their means of livelihood, and he did not provide any alternative. Is this the kind of person that wants to preside over the affairs of a very complex and highly pluralistic like Nigeria? Like someone noted very aptly, if el-Rufai is made president, expect a military coup in three months, el-Rufai does not have the temperament and maturity to rule Nigeria. The words that come out of his mouth alone can cause war. Besides, it is very important to know that, whereas el-Rufai pretends to be working for the president, when in actual fact he is running rings round the president in a desperate bid to clinch the coveted post at all cost. That is why Simon Kolawole said, el-Rufai recently hinted about his moral advantage over Obasanjo in an interview with THE NATION newspaper. He said he did not buy any shares as DG of BPE during the privatization programme and that he advised top government officials not to buy. He was at a loss to why the president’s company acquired shares in Transcorp. This is not a point to be missed or dismissed. He was saying, in effect, that where Obasanjo failed, he has succeeded.

Perhaps el-Rufai has forgotten that the country still remember his relationship with Jimmy Lawal, the rogue that defrauded Alpha Merchant Bank before running away from the country, to avoid the long arms of the law. Lawal, the questionable character was recruited by el-Rufai through whom he established a consultancy service where 10 per cent of the total contributions of federal government civil servants running into billions of naira were paid into. After milking dry the public fund through this illegal, unpatriotic and corrupt act, Jimmy Lawal changed base to Bangladesh where he has rerouted the siphoned funds into an unknown account and destination. And the question is when the EFCC dragnet caught up with Jimmy Lawal and he implicated el-Rufai as the brain behind the theft, what did Nuhu Ribadu do to bring el-Rufai to book? Nigerians should not forget in a hurry the controversies surrounding Pentascope and the aborted selling of NITEL where el-Rufai played a key role. People have not forgotten his ten million naira largesse to a corps member girlfriend. Rufal has been seizing lands, acquiring them for himself, his wives and family members and selling them at very high prices to people that can buy. The reason why he pursued the demolition exercise with so much intensity is not because he really wants to restore the master plan of Abuja, but to grab and acquire the lands that are close to the town, thereby feed fat on the sweat and toil of the poor. El-Rufai is a common thief, an opportunist, thoroughly confused, always talking from both sides of his mouth; he has no credibility and integrity, a chronic womanizer, a pathological liar, an unrepentant sadist, emotionally unable with split personality and always playing to the gallery.

And, like Simon Kolawole rightly remarked, “I have strong reservations about his (Rufai) ability to lead a country like Nigeria, especially in a democratic setting. He will make an excellent military administrator because of his soft spot for arbitrariness. He was once said to threatening to revoke some Cs of O. Reminded that the Cs of O were obtained legally, he allegedly retorted, what does it take to cancel a C of O? Is it not for the minister to just say so?” This is the kind of person that wants to be the president of Nigeria. This is a man who has never contested any election in his life, he has not been democratically elected into any elective office, he has no democratic credentials, he has no known political platform, he has never led any political group, he is not knowledgeable in the act and art of politicking, he is politically naïve, but very sly and perfidious, this is a man who is always angry with himself.

When he was appointed minister of the FCT, the first hornets’ nest he stirred was his accusation that senators Ibrahim Mantu, the Deputy Senate President and Jonathan Zwingina demanded N54million, to facilitate his nomination as minister. Although many people think perhaps he was saying the truth but the matter died for lack of proof. This was a person that the House of Representatives said should not hold any office again in Nigeria, this because of the two females in his employment that he paid in dollars as well as Rufai’s pentascope deal, where he was overseeing the transfer of Nitel to the Dutch firm in questionable circumstances, thereby making the country to lose over N100billion in the pentascope transaction, before the House resolution was quashed by the court. El-Rufai’s most critical problem now is the image of one of his consultants, Jimi Lawal who ran Alpha Merchant Bank aground and fled the country to escape trail. How did he hire a man with such a rotten past? Can two work together except they agree? What is the nature of the consultancy? There is no doubt whatsoever that this is not the kind of president that the country wants. El-Rufai will not be the president of Nigeria.

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