A former presidential aide, Reno Omokri has fired shots at former Governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai.
Omokri in a post on Facebook, claimed that El-Rufai is a drowning man.
This followed El-Rufai’s statement against Nuhu Ribadu. Ribadu had claimed that he never called Tinubu, Orji Kalu and other governors corrupt.
However, El-Rufai provided evidence to show he did.
Reacting in a post on Facebook, Omokri called El-Rufai a drowning man.
He wrote:
Malam Nasir el-Rufai is frustrated. He lost out in Kaduna, where the Governor has wisely refused to be his Man Friday, and he lost out in becoming a minister after Kaduna residents raised several petitions against him for paying killer herdsmen, who perpetrated the Southern Kaduna Genocide, which rather unsurprisingly stopped as soon as Nasir left office.
In his bitterness, he has started drowning politically, and he wants to take Malam Nuhu Ribadu, perhaps the most honest Nigerian who ever lived, a man who rejected the largest bribe in Nigeria’s history.
If you look at the so-called evidence he displayed against Malam Ribadu, in the form of a sensational headline from 2006, it does not invalidate what Malam Ribadu said. The then Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did not say that then-Governor Bola Tinubu was corrupt, had been investigated, found guilty, or had been indicted.
He made a general statement about ALL serving Governors at that time, without excluding anyone. Malam Ribadu said that based on the general feeling at that time, they were lucky not to be in the same position as Governors Dariye and Alamieyeseigha. He did not say they had been investigated and found to be corrupt. He was speaking about the general perception about those Governors. Perception, as Nasir el-Rufai knows, is not reality.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was a new agency at the time of that statement in 2005/6, and the head of the Commission needed to instil the fear of God in all Governors by reminding them that the EFCC was watching.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation also applies that psychological operations strategy, which is called a show of force. Shows of force are rhetoric or actions designed by a military or law enforcement body to instil fear of committing a crime in those vulnerable to temptation.
Nasir el-Rufai mentioned the transcripts of the Federal Executive Council for that period, which he claims corroborate his assertions. If they exist, which they do not, then he is challenged to provide them.
The fact is that Malam Nuhu Ribadu did not say that President Bola Tinubu was corrupt when he was the Chairman of the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission.
And how could Nuhu Ribadu have done that and become close friends with the same Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who engineered his emergence as the Presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria a mere four years later?
Malam Nasir el-Rufai will have to do better than his current manipulations. On the contrary, it was he who accused General Buhari of corruption, only to turn around and become his chief vuvuzela within months.
On October 4, 2010, Nasir el-Rufai said the following about Buhari:
“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, Buhari allowed 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.”
Three months after making this statement, Malam Nasir el-Rufai was kissing General Buhari’s backside.
That is why he thinks that Nuhu Ribadu is like him. He is projecting his very low moral standards on others.
Reno Omokri
