El-Rufai: Limits of Dubious Demagoguery

Dialogue With Nigeria BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

“I am writing as a concerned citizen to seek clarification and reassurance regarding information available to the political opposition leadership about a procurement of approximately 10 kilograms of Thallium Sulphate by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), reportedly from a supplier in Poland.. Given that thallium salts are highly toxic and tightly controlled substances, I believe it is important for public safety, democratic accountability and for maintaining public trust to confirm the following the intended purpose and end-use of the imported thallium sulphate”-El-Rufai

“Thallium is primarily used in high-tech industries for manufacturing electronics (semiconductors, photoelectric cells), specialized fiber optics, and low-melting glass, as well as in medical, cardiovascular, scintigraphic imaging. It is also employed in high-temperature superconductors and, historically, as a toxic rodenticide”-Encyclopedia Britannica

Scouting for a presidential material among the younger generation of public figures from the North in the electoral cycle of the 2011 general elections, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu had commissioned a public opinion poll on the popularity rating of a sample comprising Nuhu Ribadu, Nasir El-Rufai, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and others. Ribadu scored 45%, Rufai scored 7%, Sanusi scored 3%. It was on the basis of this poll that Tinubu reached out to Ribadu and enthroned him as the Presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, in 2011.

Prior to this, (on account of our camaraderie and quite efficient manner, he had discharged his mandate as Minister of the federal capital territory), Ribadu, myself and other members of a nine member caucus group empanelled by President Olusegun Obasanjo (to plot his exit strategy) had presented El-Rufai to the latter as our preferred choice as Presidential candidate for the 2027 general elections. Obasanjo rejected the suggestion and dismissed us as naive and that he knows El-Rufai more than any of us does. Besides, he said he had resolved to pick his successor from among the state governors (whose support was indispensable to the success of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP at the elections) and that the choice he had made has demonstrated impeccable character and proved himself a dependable and loyal ally.

He was speaking of Umaru Yaradua, who coincidentally was the junior brother of Shehu Yaradua (who served as Obasanjo’s deputy when he was military head of state). Somewhat inevitably, he would subsequently expatiate on the flaws of El-Rufai in his memoirs, ‘My Watch’ where he described him as having a “penchant for reputation savaging,” noting his tendency to lie and lack of consistent loyalty to others, being primarily loyal only to himself. He further characterised him as a “pathological purveyor of untruths and half-truths,” but nonetheless deemed him a “talented young man who can always deliver under close supervision.”.

I generally refrain from public scrutiny of those I have had a close personal relationship but I believe El-Rufai has crossed the red line this time around.

His ‘hell hath no fury than a woman spurned” relationship with Ribadu started with my earlier account of how he lost out to his close friend in the consideration of whom to choose as the ACN presidential candidate in the 2011 general elections.

This trend was at play when the Senate failed to confirm his ministerial nomination in 2023. Naturally, he felt slighted and disappointed like any of us would, but what made rejection particularly unbearable for him was that his nemesis , Nuhu Ribadu, had hitherto landed the all important appointment as the National Security Adviser, NSA.

The Nigerian Senate, particularly, the Senate President, is not my cup of tea but whatever the motive and power play

behind his failure to clinch a ministerial confirmation, the truth is that, on the record of his governorship of Kaduna state, for eight years, he is truly unfit for confirmation as Minister of the federal republic. No governor of that politically volatile state has been more callously divisive as he was.

He could barely disguise his thinly veiled deep seated animosity towards the Christian population of the state. His tenure was strewn with bloody security breakdowns, with, more often than not, the Christians as the predictable victims. He had set the stage for the kind of governor he would be when in 2012, he threatened “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,”.

His legacy as governor are self-evident.

According to the reports of ICRI:

“In the days leading up to his 2019 reelection, El-Rufai whipped up public anger and physical violence when he falsely claimed that 130 Fulani had been killed in Kajuru, a locality near the capital city of Kaduna. Many, including the National Emergency Management Agency and El Rufai’s own Commissioner of Police denied his claims of an attack on the Fulani. In fact, eleven native Catholics were killed in Kajuru a few days before his comments. Suspected Fulani militants killed 127 people in Kajuru in what were presumably reprisal attacks in the month following El Rufai’s statement”.

When he took office as governor in 2015, he said that “the Fulani have nothing to fear, since a Fulani [is] now governor of the state.”. Glorifying Fulani affinity with bloody vengefulness, he went further “Of course you know the Fulani have a long memory of avenging any killings; so their relations were coming from other countries to avenge the killings.”

“So a lot of what was happening in Southern Kaduna was actually from outside Nigeria. We took certain steps. We got a group of people that were going round trying to trace some of these people in Cameroon, Niger republic and so on to tell them that there is a new governor who is Fulani like them and has no problem paying compensations for lives lost and he is begging them to stop killing”.

He didn’t spare the international community either. In terrorist verbiage, he warned the International observer mission coming to monitor the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. “We are waiting for the person who will come and intervene.They will go back in body bags because nobody will come to Nigeria and tell us how to run our country. We have got that independence and we are trying to run our country as decently as possible”.

“The escalation of violence in Kaduna began almost immediately after El-Rufai took office. In 2015, there were 356 deaths from 24 violent incidents, marking the start of a troubling trend. By 2021, the situation peaked, with 1,225 fatalities from 480 incidents”.

Typically, the nearer he got to the hour of reckoning with the anti-corruption agencies, the higher the decibel of his Kangaroo debate trickery, ignoring the ball and kicking the leg. I seldom find myself in agreement with press releases from the public communications office of the presidency. Today is an exception to that rule.

“The former governor’s outburst, wrote Bayo Onanuga, comes amid ongoing federal investigations into his own administration. A June 2024 report by the Kaduna State House of Assembly accused his government of mismanaging N423.2 billion in loans and grants. The EFCC has since invited El-Rufai and several former officials who served under him for questioning. He is expected to appear voluntarily at the EFCC headquarters in Abuja on February 16, 2026”.

“The truth is: Mallam El-Rufai has two clear intentions behind his recent actions and tantrums. One, to create political tension in the country, create an atmosphere of fear and unrest, and then damage the government through deliberate misinformation. Two, to divert attention from his domestic problems in Kaduna State, where he is facing massive corruption allegations. To draw attention to himself and project himself as a victim of persecution, he wants to nationalise his personal problems with his home state government, knowing that Nigerians will not be on his side over corruption charges”.

Rotimi Fasan had similarly written “He is being asked to account for some

N432 billion, mostly loans incurred in the name of the Kaduna state government. The state legislators, up to the last man, signed a petition demanding the investigation of El-Rufai. How this transformed into a planned arrest is a matter only he can explain”.

“Yet, he is far from being the paragon of integrity he advertises himself as. He is not a man by whose words much store can be set. He looks out solely for himself and would go to any length to ruin what he cannot get. It is why he has pivoted from the main point of his invitation by the EFCC to launch personal attacks against the NSA, accusing him of being behind his woes”

I have asked this question elsewhere: even if the complaint of political persecution is genuine, does this exonerate anyone so accused from criminal allegations of theft and corruption?

Brimming with hubris in his letter to the NSA, El-Rufai said “The government believes it is the only one that listens to calls, but we also have our ways. He made the call and gave the order. Someone tapped his phone. The government listens to our calls all the time without a court order. Someone tapped his phone and told us that he gave the order,” It is against this backdrop that I conclude with the citation of Max Weber’s definition of the state ‘as the sole legitimate repository of the power of coercion, claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’

This monopoly is personified by whichever government is in power. It is within the context of this monopoly that arms and other weapons of coercion and warfare are imported into the country. Assuming that the claim of El-Rufai is correct, the Nigerian government has done nothing wrong by importing Thallium into the country subject to international law and convention, just as it has done nothing wrong by importing machine guns. We do not know the content of the Tomahawk missile launched by Donald Trump on the muster point of the terrorists who were aiming to launch coordinated attacks on Nigeria the other day. For all we know it may or may not contain toxic portions like Thallium and it is irrelevant.

The real worry for Nigeria security, if his megalomaniac diatribes are true, is the vulnerability of its security communications to interception and the audacity of El-Rufai to blab about it. May be, just may be, it is the same source from which Nigerian terrorists obtain critical information on the plans and movements of the Nigerian army, hence the seeming intractability of the current Nigerian civil war.