Disgusting Desperation And Lamentations Of Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai.
Tuesday (Afor) 16-09-2025.
Malam Ahmad Nasir El- Rufai is the immediate-past Governor of Kaduna State in North-West of Nigeria.
An Ahmadu Bello University (Zaria) trained First Class Quantity Surveyor, Rufai was appointed the inaugural Director-General of Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, in November 1999 by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Most Federal Government Enterprises and Estates were sold off under his watch.
In 2003, President Obasanjo appointed him Minister of Federal Capital Territory. He was so notorious for demolition of residents’ property that he was nicknamed Mr Demolition.
One remarkable development that Mallam Nasir El-Rufai was known for as soon as he was sworn-in as Minister was his allegation that Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Silas Zwingina had demanded a bribe of the USA Dollar equivalent of N54m from him in order to have him cleared at the Senate screening. The two Senators denied the allegation and, rather, accused him of being a ‘pathological liar and character assasin’. He could not prove his allegation. The Senate, therefore, on 10th October, 2003, following a Motion moved by Senator John Mbata, and seconded by Senator David Brigidi, freed the two Senators of Nasir El-Rufai’s unsubstantiated allegation by a unanimous voice vote of 68 Senators present in the Senate. Nasir El-Rufai was not and has not been able to absolve himself of the tag of being a ‘pathological liar and character assasin’.
As a Minister of Federal Capital Territory in 2004, just one year after his appointment, Senate Public Accounts Committee discovered Malam Nasir El-Rufai was paying exorbitant salaries to his Staff without appropriation by the National Assembly, and asked him to refund the unauthorized excesses to Government Treasury. In his response, he retorted, ‘silence is the best answer to fools’. The Senate asked him to apologize for making such insulting remark but he refused. The Senate had to embark on a two-day protest. Despite President Obasanjo’s intervention and apology on Nasir El-Rufai’s behalf, the Senate refused to forgive him until he personally cowardly crouched to the Senate, recanted his irresponsible utterances, timidly apologized and weakly asked for forgiveness.
For eight years, 2015-2023, Nasir El-Rufai was Governor of Kaduna State. His tenure was characterized by divisive vituperations. Before becoming Governor in 2015, Nasir El-Rufai had, in 2012, tweeted…..”We will write this for all to read. Anyone, Soldier or not, that kills the Fulani, takes a loan payable one day no matter how long it takes”.
In his jingoism, he deliberately refused to differentiate the law-abiding Fulani from the notorious criminal fulani terrorists.
According a report by International Christian Concern in December 2016, Nasir El-Rufai, as Governor of Kaduna State, punished Christian protesters in Kaduna State. In the first instance, he was reported to have ordered a lock down of the protesting Christian Community in Jema’a Local Government Area of Southern Kaduna. A subsequent lock down of the Christian Community lasted for 72 days, starting from June 2020. On the whole, International Christian Concern reported that there were up to six lock downs imposed by Governor Nasir el Rufai on the Christian Community, and that during those periods the Community was attacked, with about 120 indigenes killed, and their homes looted and destroyed. Kaduna State has one of the highest numbers of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, no thanks to the machinations of Nasir.
The same Governor Nasir El-Rufai, it was, who was widely quoted as having, in 2019, threatened that any foreign Observer who tried to ‘interfere in the conduct of 2019 elections in Nigeria would go back in body bags’.
All through his tenure as Governor of Kaduna State, it was reported that Nasir El-Rufai never hid his disdain for the Peoples of Southern Kaduna in general, and Christians in particular. The Peoples of Southern Kaduna and Christians were brutally subjected to extreme degrees of inhumanity by his fellow Fulani who paraded themselves as terrorist herdsmen and bandits. In all these, Rufai never showed empathy.
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai was believed to be one of the Governors closest to General Muhammadu Buhari as President of Nigeria, 2015-2023. Upon all the massacre the fulani terrorists carried out in Nigeria, especially in the Middle-Belt, and such other areas as Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto where the fulani terrorists were relentless in killing Hausa People and other tribesmen, Nasir El-Rufai did not, in any way, rise up against such act of barbarism and inhumanity.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, 1999-2007, under whose watch Nasir El-Rufai had served as Director-General of Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, Secretary of Concil on Privatization, and Minister of Federal Capital Territory, had in his Book, My Watch, had the following to chronicle about Nasir El-Rufai;
” I recognized his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to any body or any issue for long, but to Nasir El-Rufai”.
“I have heard how he viciously savaged the reputation of his uncle, a man who was like his foster father”.
“Character wise, Nasir has not much going for him”.
“My vivid recollection of him is his penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories and his inability to sustain loyalty for long”.
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, that character described by his former employer, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ph.D, GCFR, in those despicable lines above, has been threatening fire and brimstone on how he, in his exaggerated self-importance, would send President Bola Ahmed Tinubu packing out of the Presidential Lodge in Aso Rock in 2027.
It should be recollected that Nasir El-Rufai had ambitiously appeared before the Nigerian Senate for screening as a Ministerial Nominee but by the time the list of Nominees confirmed by the Senate was out, his name was missing. Why should his name not be missing? A man who had openly boasted how his fulani kinsmen can be vindictive, a man who gladly watched as the Peoples of Southern Kaduna were being massacred by his fulani kinsmen, and a man who openly threatened that foreign election observers would go back to their countries in body bags, deserves not to successfully pass through the crucible of the Nigerian Senate.
Look at the hypocrisy of Nasir El-Rufai! If he had succeeded in passing through the critical surveillance of the Nigerian Senate, which would, though, have been ridiculous, would he have been vomiting all the trash he has been throwing up?
Meanwhile, Nasir El-Rufai that has now degenerated to an inconsequential ranter or wailer has lost his base in Kaduna. An ordinary Committee meeting of African Democratic Congress he had planned to hold in Kaduna ended up in fiasco due to resentment to his domineering nature by old members of the ADC Coalition.
True to his characteristic arrogance, his successor, Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Uba Sani, has dissociated his Administration from anything that is linked to him.
In effect, Nasir El-Rufai has, unknown to him, ingloriously assumed the unenvious position of a ‘General without a Command’.
His lamentations are those of a sinking man that is desperately but hopelessly trying to clutch at straws in the face of a turbulent devastating ocean wave.
The performance of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has already carved a niche for him, and, seamlessly, he will be reelected, by God’s grace, in 2027.
Sir Don Ubani; KSC, JP
Okwubunka of Asa and Okeamadi Gburugburu.
Publisher, Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
