Nasir El-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna State, has indicated that he is no longer interested in being a member of President Bola Tinubu’s government.
During a meeting on Tuesday, sources within the Presidency reportedly stated that Mr. El-Rufai informed President Tinubu that he was no longer interested in becoming a minister, but that he would continue to give his quota to the growth of Nigeria as a private person. This information was reported by the Premium Times.
According to one of the sources, he also mentioned to the president that he required some time to concentrate on the doctoral program that he had enrolled in at a university in the Netherlands.
According to a second source familiar with the situation, the former governor of Kaduna State proposed Jafaru Ibrahim Sani as a new ministerial nominee for the state, claiming that the President would find him to be very helpful and resourceful in his role.
During Mr. El-Rufai’s tenure as governor of Kaduna State, Mr. Sani worked as a commissioner in all three of that state’s ministries (Local Government, Education, and Environment).
Mr. El-Rufai paid a visit to the President at the presidential villa the day after the Senate confirmed 45 cabinet nominees following a screening process that lasted a week and involved 48 potential candidates.
His approval, along with that of two others, was, however, deferred by the higher parliamentary house. As the reason for this action, the chamber cited security reports from the State Security Service.
Sani Danladi, a former senator from the state of Taraba, and Stella Okotete, a nominee from the state of Delta, were the other two candidates.
According to our sources, as soon as Mr. El-Rufai became aware of the Senate’s ruling on his case, he immediately sought and obtained an appointment to meet with the president. Mr. El-Rufai had just returned to Nigeria from London on Monday.
According to the individuals we spoke with, President Tinubu informed the former governor that he had received several petitions critical of his ministerial nomination during the meeting that took place on Tuesday afternoon.
In order for the president to arrive at a conclusion about the petitions and the SSS report to the Senate, the president then requested a grace period of twenty-four additional hours.
At that point, Mr. El-Rufai stated that he was no longer interested in being a minister since it appeared that some forces around the president were plotting fiercely to hinder his emergence as a federal minister. He said this because it appeared that some forces around the president were conspiring to block his emergence as a federal minister.
During his confirmation hearing on August 1st, Mr. El-Rufai revealed that Mr. Tinubu had urged him to collaborate with him on the power problem that is currently plaguing the nation.
According to him, the President of Nigeria had set a goal of achieving complete elimination of power outages across the country within the next seven years.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. El-Rufai allegedly told the President that since he would no longer be in the federal executive council, he would return the following day with his team to present the preliminary work that has been done so far on the energy sector. This was apparently said in light of the fact that Mr. El-Rufai would no longer be a member of the council.
Eyo Ekpo was a former commissioner at the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). Hafiz Bayero was a former commissioner and administrator of the Kaduna Capital Territory Authority. Tolu Oyekan of the Boston Consulting Group and Ayodele Oni, a lawyer, were also members of the team that accompanied the former governor to make presentations to the president on Wednesday.
The presentation on gas was given by Olu Verheijen, who is the special assistant to the President on Energy Matters.
Mr. El-Rufai is currently attending classes at the United Nations University in Maastricht in order to earn his doctorate in public policy.
According to his associates, when he was getting ready to step down from his position as governor in May of this year, he expressed interest in retiring from public life and focusing on his doctoral studies instead.
But that was before the President-elect Tinubu asked him to join his cabinet so that he could entrust him with the task of repositioning the ineffective power sector in the largest economy in Africa.
It is not apparent what suddenly went wrong between the two men to the point that a government agency would oppose Mr. El-Rufai’s candidacy for ministerial position without the president taking any action.
Muyiwa Adekeye, who serves as a media consultant to Mr. El-Rufai, declined to comment for this article after being asked about it.