PEOPLES GAZETTE
Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna has kicked against Jafaru Sani’s potential ministerial nomination as suggested by Nasir El-Rufai, Peoples Gazette learnt this weekend.
Mr El-Rufai had on Wednesday informed President Bola Tinubu of his intention to pull out of ministerial consideration. He subsequently proposed his replacement in Jafaru Sani, his staunch loyalist who served under him in Kaduna as commissioner.
While offering Jafaru Sani as his substitute, Mr El-Rufai told the president that he had informed Governor Sani about the choice and both parties had agreed, The Gazette reported on Friday. The former governor himself afterwards departed for Egypt.
But Governor Sani rushed back from a trip to London on Thursday evening to tell Mr Tinubu at the State House that he was not in agreement with Jafaru Sani as the replacement minister for Mr El-Rufai from Kaduna, per sources familiar with the conversation.
“He has now told the president to expect another name,” a source said under anonymity to discuss the matter. “He complained that Jafaru Sani has no political relevance in Kaduna and has been too loyal to El-Rufai.”
The development could open yet another flank in the political battle involving Mr El-Rufai, who said he decided to withdraw from ministerial nomination because he was incensed by a gang-up against him which the president did not do enough to communicate with him. The attack against Mr El-Rufai has been championed within the State House by national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu, The Gazette was told.
Mr Ribadu authorised a controversial security dossier that accused Mr El-Rufai of violence and corruption.
Mr El-Rufai has a history of condoning lethal violence, making inflammatory statements to rile up ethnic and religious embers, and was relentlessly accused of corruption as Abuja minister and Kaduna governor. He also deployed state resources to silence journalists and critics, a behavioural pattern that polarised opinions even among the Nigerian literary elite that he had long courted. He has continued to deny all allegations of wrongdoing, including those publicly documented against him.
Still, the credibility of the so-called security report was immediately doubted by Nigerians after the same national security establishment cleared Nyesom Wike, a notoriously violent and corrupt former governor of Rivers who brazenly rigged the outcome of the presidential election in his state for Mr Tinubu.
The purported security report also failed to flag the nomination of Abubakar Bagudu, a thief who laundered billions of public dollars for late dictator Sani Abacha. A large chunk of Mr Bagudu’s loot remained tucked in several jurisdictions abroad; while authorities in the United States and Britain are still tracing and confiscating hundreds of millions of dollars from the former Kebbi governor.
But Mr El-Rufai’s fate was not the first time a so-called security report would be drafted by the State Security Service to counter the nomination of a presidential nominee, although for other roles other than ministerial designations. In 2016, the SSS wrote two different security report for and against Ibrahim Magu’s nomination as the chairman of anti-graft office EFCC, causing nationwide confusion and mortifying then-President Muhammadu Buhari…
