There is no gainsaying that hypocrisy is a weird tool in the hands of some Nigerian Politicians. It is also, unfortunately, their bane.
Malam Nasir el Rufai is the immediate-past Governor of Kaduna State. While he was a Governor for eight consecutive years, 2015-2023, a section of the State he governed, the People of Southern Kaduna, who are ancestral owners of their land, and mainly Christians, were subjected to perpetual ethnic cleansing by Fulani herdsmen and terrorists. They were slaughtered and maimed in their thousands. The lucky ones that managed to survive were driven away from their ancestral homes to become emergency refugees as Internally Displayed Persons. Of course, their homes were criminally razed down by fire ignited by the ravaging heartless Fulani bandits.
In all the atrocities committed against the innocent, harmless and defenceless People of Southern Kaduna, Malam el Rufai, who, himself, is a Fulani, never condemned those perilous acts of inhumanity against the People of Southern Kaduna.
It will be recalled that even before becoming Governor of Kaduna State, el Rufai had insensitively and arrogantly tweeted on July 15, 2012 that ”Any one, Soldier or not, that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes”. What an incitement!
Meanwhile, while el Rufai was turning his eyes the other way as the People of Southern Kaduna were being massacred by el Rufai’s Fulani kinsmen as he was Governor, mass killings of other Indigenous Peoples of Northern Nigeria were simultaneously taking place in other parts of the North. The calamities were holistic and unprecedented.
The pogrom was not only painful because el Rufai, a Fulani, was the Governor of Kaduna State, another Fulani, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, was the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria when Nigerians who were not Fulani were being decimated by the Fulani. Yet, Buhari did not, even for one day, make an ordinary verbal pronouncement against the killings, not to talk of giving a command against the ethnic cleansing.
It is very certain that left with el Rufai and Buhari, the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Nigeria would have been wiped out of human existence by now. Unfortunately, the two are not God.
So, for el Rufai to be banking his calculations of giving President Bola Ahmed Tinubu the ‘Jonathan treatment’ of 2015, on Northern Unity and Solidarity, is completely misplaced. The Hausa have been so traumatized by the Fulani terrorists that they now wish to re-establish their freedom. All sections of the North are struggling for one thing, and that is getting out of the excruciating suffocating squeeze of the Fulani.
As if that is not a major challenge to the likes of el Rufai, a new demographics has cropped up in the North. The youthful elites amongst the Indigenous tribes of Northern Nigeria are openly manifesting resilient consciousness of the marginalisation their Peoples have been subjected to by the likes of el Rufai and Buhari. They are determined that never again will they allow or tolerate such exploitative inhuman conditions against their Peoples. The question, therefore, is which North is el Rufai referring to? Which North is he banking upon to give President Tinubu the ‘Jonathan treatment’?
Malam Nasir el Rufai and his co-dreamers will not be able to give President Tinubu the ‘Jonathan treatment’ in 2027. President Tinubu’s Policies are gradually yielding positive results. There is every indication that the economy is picking up, with inflation dropping systematically.
The President is being accused of nepotism in his appointments to key National Positions. He could have a review on that aspect, and rejig his administration. After all, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, has conscientiously been in the business of bridge-building in Nigeria for many years and has his friends and associates across the nooks and crannies of the country.
Sir Don Ubani is a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State and writes from his native Asa land beautifully situated between Aba in Abia State and Port-Harcourt in Rivers State.
