BY SIMON REEF MUSA
Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai of Kaduna State is not your usual person in power who restricts himself to tackling the challenges of leadership and improving the lot of the majority; he is a text book leader who sees power as a platform for experimenting theories learnt from school. In testing the efficacy of theories propounded by scholars, mostly in foreign lands, the governor often stray beyond the corridors of power to court controversy. Not many still happily remember his days as a minister under former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Unlike when other politicians allowed piety to govern their style, this quantity surveyor from Zaria is an absolute stickler for rules. For him, man was made for the rules and not the other way round. So, thousands of homes in Abuja shanties came under the teeth of bulldozers. By the time he was done, the Abuja master plan was saved by few inches.
During his days as an opposition politician, shortly after he survived what his admirers perceived as subterranean political prosecution by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua that culminated in his triumphant return from self-exile in 2010, the ‘bulldozer’ made headlines that kept officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan on their toes. Described as a brilliant and straight-shooting smart hothead, the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is not without his flaws which border on his propensity to rush into places where angels fear to tread. With el-Rufai, you are never in doubt where he is headed for. Unlike many politicians in the country, he is not afraid to walk his talk, no matter how tough. Footprints of his governance in nearly four years at the helm in Kaduna have not changed the traits of the man who describes his foray into public service as “accidental”. Said to be cerebral and technology savvy for a state that is characterised with various forces fighting for attention, the governor has opened up wounds of ethnic and religious consciousness and attenuated the bond of unity among Kaduna citizens.
This week on the Nigerian Television Authority programme, TuesdayLive, the former minister was his usual elements when, to the consternation of viewers, he declared that foreigners who intervene in the forthcoming polls should be ready to return to their countries in body bags. In his words: “Those that are calling for anyone to come and intervene in Nigeria, we are waiting for the person that would come and intervene, they would go back in body bags.”
With this threat of death pointed at foreign electoral observers, the trajectory to peaceful conduct of the forthcoming polls is fraught with bobby traps. If someone like el-Rufai can engage in threatening the lives of foreign observers, how can we be saved from a woofing cabal that is irrevocably committed to holding onto power at whatever cost? The threat by el-Rufai is coming on the heels of allegations that the ruling party is in bed with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to swindle the opposition of victory in the approaching polls.
The reactions to this monumental gaffe by the governor were immediate, with a cross-section of Nigerians lampooning el-Rufai for being a leaky mouth and constituting himself into a nuisance. Why the governor should be ratcheting passion for a possible foreign intervention when no foreign country has threatened military action against Nigeria over the polls remains a puzzle. The involvement of two governors from Niger Republic in the trail of the APC presidential campaign in Kano had attracted critical reviews from the discerning public. However, chieftains of the ruling party, including Malam Nuhu Ribadu, responded that there was nothing wrong if citizens of Niger Republic, Chad and other West African countries join in the APC campaign. The disposition of the ruling party to accommodate Chadians, Nigeriens, among other foreign nationals, in its campaigns suggests there are underground moves by the APC to introduce violence and create an avenue for bloodshed in order to perpetrate rigging. How can intervention by foreign nationals, in this case electoral monitors, be seen an act of aggression? Does intervention mean the same as interference?
Though el-Rufai had committed a glaring blunder capable of igniting global outrage, a statement issued by the governor’s media minders only created more problem for him. The statement signed by his aide, Samuel Aruwan, failed to ameliorate the negative impact of the gaffe that threatened foreign observers with death. How the governor could accuse his critics of suffering from a basic lack of understanding of the English language remains an insult of unimaginable proportions. As a former English Language teacher, I can say that the meanings of words are derived from contexts rather than their actual meanings. That is why denotative and connotative meanings of words are crucial in semantic analysis of expressions. When politicians are caught in their despicable acts of turning truth on its head, they resort to shameless defence of their solecism.
It is in the character of el-Rufai to resort to unreasonable outbursts and threaten terror on his opponents. During his campaign for the World Bank $350 million loan that was terminated at the National Assembly, he uttered unprintable words against three senators of the state, as well as called on Kaduna citizens to shave the beards of Senator Suleiman Othman Hunkuyi, apart from calling on his supporters to cut the afro hairstyle of Sen Shehu Sani as a reward for his refusal to support the loan request.
There is no doubt that tension and frightening unpredictability are sending fear down the spines of many citizens ahead of the forthcoming elections, with some resorting to taking their immediate families to their villages and towns for safety. Such a threat by el-Rufai is capable of creating a combustible atmosphere that may provide fertile grounds for national upheavals and create room for the present clouds of uncertainty to dissolve into a hailstone of bloodshed.
Unlike Nigerian politicians who would prefer to keep mute and work behind the scene to achieve their ambition, the governor is unperturbed to come against a moving train once he believes in the rightness of his selfish cause. In speech, he does not take into cognisance the political exigencies or the appropriateness of his statements; he simply shoots straight and damn the consequences. Since assuming the reins of power in Kaduna in May 2015, he has embarked on measures that only those less concerned with the milk of human kindness can do. He has sacked no fewer than 25,000 teachers he dubbed as illiterates and disrobed no fewer than 4,000 village and district heads of their royal crowns. No fewer than 2,000 public sector workers in the state have been retired, and their hope of getting their gratuities is waning by the passing of each day. Public schools are in the worst of conditions, with not less than N10 billion deployed to feed school kids who sit on the floor, and their conditions made worse by absence of teaching aids.
Not a few thought that el-Rufai would become the beacon of the APC government when he assumed office in 2015. Sadly, he has become an unmitigated embarrassment to what the APC symbolises for the Nigerian electorate. Apart from pursuing policies that promote disunity across the state, the Kaduna State governor is set to go down as a monumental disaster, the worst in the history of the state. Those who seek to defend the governor on his many verbal blunders are not being fair both to him and the system. el-Rufai is a danger in the corridors of power and the best we can do is retire him to the activists’ platform where he can continue to dazzle the world with his text book intelligence.
