Sanusi and the betrayal of El-Rufai

By Farooq A. Kperogi

A few days before Nasir El-Rufai’s trending, impassioned September 23 letter talking about the “apparent silence” of friends and family members he had “publicly stood by,” I read social media posts lamenting Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II’s supposed betrayal of El-Rufai in his hour of need, especially in light of the role El-Rufai played in rescuing Sanusi from banishment. 

I thought the assumption that Sanusi had abandoned his friend was unfair and that even El-Rufai would be reluctant to reach that conclusion because of the delicate position Sanusi occupies and the practical impossibility of reciprocating what El-Rufai did for him when Abdullahi Ganduje dethroned and banished him.

Then El-Rufai’s letter appeared. El-Rufai did not identify anyone by name, so any identification has to remain inferential. But Sanusi seems to me one of the likeliest people he had in mind.

Some of the other obvious possibilities can be eliminated fairly easily. El-Rufai has already publicly declared Nuhu Ribadu and Uba Sani as “former friends” and accused them of working against him. They therefore hardly qualify as the friends whose true relationship with him revealed itself in his moment of personal adversity.

 Tinubu is also an awkward fit because El-Rufai has publicly insisted that he and Tinubu were “never friends” in the personal sense. In any case, he is being detained by Tinubu’s government with what seems like Tinubu’s express imprimatur. 

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