Nasir Elrufai said "Nothing can make Jonathan succeed. He is grossly incompetent, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t even understand the issues. I am sorry! I know the man more than those that are shouting with Jonathan because when he was my friend, none of them even knew him. I knew Jonathan as a deputy governor in 2002. That was when I first met him and we have been relating. So, all these new found Jonathan lovers should just shut up. I know him and I know what he can do and what he cannot do. So, please, they should just leave me alone. Those that want jobs can go and take jobs. I don’t want".
Now, let me start by saying that Nasir Elrufai lied when he said this and there is documentary evidence to prove this. For instance, contrary to what he said in this interview, Nasir Elrufai at a meeting with Ambassador John Campbell in April of 2007 said that the then Vice Presidential nominee of the People's Democratic Party, PDP, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan "is clean and honest". Going further, Elrufai told the ambassador that "Governor Jonathan was the only candidate that met Obasanjo’s guidelines- honesty and Ijaw”. Unknownto Elrufai, the ambassador kept a record of their conversation which is now a public record in America.
Beyond that, Nasir Elrufai, who had gone into voluntary exile under the presidency of Malam Umaru Musa Yar'adua
When Elrufai returned to Nigeria, in 2010, he visited the President at Aso Rock
Presidential Villa on May 11, 2010, and was the first major political
figure to call on President Jonathan to contest for the 2011
presidential election. Elrufaialso praised President Jonathan openly.
The Holy Bible says in James 1:8 "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways". I think this biblical verse best describes Nasir Elrufai. Elruf
Buhari saying "I think that where Nigeria is today, 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".
However, this is what the same Elrufai had to say aboutBuhari on October 6 2010 " 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. His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his
parochial focus are already well-known. In 1984, Buhariallowed 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 shows 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."
Now, how does one man go from warning the nation aboutBuhari as
a man unfit to govern Nigeria and one who is perpetually unelectable
because of his parochial nature to saying that he is the man that can
best lead this nation?
Is it not obvious to all that there is more than one personality in possession of the mind and soul of this man called NasirElrufai? Can any sane person trust the words of a man who is so unstable?
Today, Elrufai, 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 over the truth with a lie.
Nasir Elrufai wanted something from the President which was why he visited him at the Presidential Villa to heapunsolicited
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, Elrufai, having run out of ideas, has tagged this administration as 'incompetent'. But as they say in law, Res Ipsa Loquitor, (thefacts speaks for themselves).
In just this past month alone, we have seen a fulfilment of two major Jonathanian promises. The Akanu Ibiam Airport is now officially an International Airport as its facilities have been upgraded to meet ICAO standards and it received its first international commercial flight. Also, the rail services have been revived from Apapa Port to the North.
In
these two instances, the Jonathan administration has put money back in
the wallets of Nigerian citizens. Every time someone flies
internationally from the Akanu Ibiam Airport, he saves sixty thousand Naira that would have been spent paying for connecting flights to Lagos, Port Harcourt or Abuja. And every time you receive a container by rail in Northern Nigeria from Apapa Port, you would have savedperhaps fifty thousand Naira that would have been spent on additional cost from hauling your container by road.
And this is just for last month. Time would not permit me to highlight the 153 Almajiri schools built in every state of the North to serve our children who are engaged in the almajirinciform of Qu'ranic education (a total of 400 are to be delivered), or the ongoing reconstruction (not repair) of the
Lagos-Ibadan road for which 167 billion has already been reserved to
prevent the project being an abandoned project, or the dredging of the
River Niger up to Baro in Niger state to make
that port accessible to ships, or the establishment of the Green Belt
Zone along Nigeria's Northern borders to end desertification, or the
signing of the HYPADEC bill into law to enable the people of the Hydro
Electric producing areas benefit from their God given resources, or the
current massive multi billion Naira efforts to save the Lake Chad from
drying up. This is besides the fact that those states which did not have
a federal university prior to President Jonathan's ascendancy now have
at least one university, thanks to this administration's establishment
of nine new universities.
I
have identified these projects on purpose because they were meant to be
priority projects of yore but were however left unattended until one
man called Jonathan Goodluck entered the scene.
Why
has it taken an "incompetent" President Jonathan to grow Nigeria's
economy at over 6% per annum since he ascended to the presidency? Why
has it taken an "incompetent" administration to get Nigeria to be
promoted from a "Low Income Nation" to a "Middle Income Nation" by the World Bank? Again, it took an incompetent administration to ensure Nigeria won its first African Cup of Nations in 19 years. If previous administrations had been this 'incompetent',
then Nigeria would have long since overtaken South Africa as Africa's
largest economy, but we did not achieve this feat until an 'incompetent'
Jonathan was brought to office by the votes of over 22 million
Nigerians.
In this latest interview, Elrufai boasts that he is a "self-made man". Even this statement is a sad reflection of the irreligious state of Nasir Elrufai's mind.
People who say they are "self made" should read The Book of Daniel and
see what God did to Nebuchadnezzar after he made such a boast. Nobody is
self made. Does it make mathematical sense to believe that the God who
has numbered the hairs on your head has no input into the opportunities
that came your way?
In a Wikileaks document, an identified American diplomat revealed that Elrufai was "personally known to him to be homeless" before he got into government. Now Elrufai has
never sued the diplomat for libel or slander. But today, this man who
was known by a U.S. diplomat to be homeless now boasts that " I was already a self-made man when I came into government". Since when did homelessness amount to being "self-made"?
And Elrufai further
showed his disconnect with the realities around him when he boasted in
his interview that "there is no one who sat at the table with us when we
were making these decisions and advancing these arguments that have
come out to say that what I wrote there [his book, The Accidental Public
Servant] is not true". This statement is so easy to demolish. As at the
last count, the following persons have come out very publicly on the
front and back pages of newspapers to say that what Elrufai wrote is a lie; former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, former Economics and Financial Crimes Commission Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, former Central Bank Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, former Imo State Governor, Ikedi Ohakim amongst others. In fact, NuhuRibadu was reported in the Punch of February the 19th 2013 to have said that "There is a huge integrity deficiency" inElrufai's book!
Does Elrufai have such a record for truth that we can say that his word outweighs the words of these gentlemen?
In any case, let me conclude by saying that Malam NasirElrufai has problems that may not be known to the generality of Nigerians and certainly by his current bed fellows in the All Progressive Congress. In his book, The Accidental Public Servant, Elrufai had
terrible and nasty things to say about those whose backs he had already
climbed on and reserved encomiums for those whose backs he needs to
climb on. That alone speaks volumes of his character and should alert
his current associates to the proverb that a slave who sees his fellow
buried in shallow grave should know that he would receive the same
treatment when his time comes.
Reno Omokri is Special Assistant (New Media) to the President.
Regards,
Reno,
ADVERT
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