Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai CON is in the eye of the storm as he confessed during an interview on Arise Television of listening to wiretaped conversation of the National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu. This acknowledged phone tapping has heightened public sensitivity as this admission is beyond our daily politics, but of national security.
For the uninitiated, wiretapping is illegal under Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantees privacy of home, correspondence, and telephone conversations. The NDPR (The Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023) and Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 prohibit recording or sharing conversations/videos without consent, which violates the right to privacy.
Since Malam El Rufai failed to be made a minister under this administration, he has been going through some strange sort of meltdown. It was alleged that the reason why he was not confirmed by the National Assembly when President Tinubu sent his name was because he failed security checks. But Malam Nasir el-Rufai appeared on Arise Television early last year and accused President Tinubu and the National Security Adviser of being behind his failed ministerial nomination. Since then, life has not been the same for the former governor of Kaduna State. He has continued from one meltdown episode to another, making inflammatory statements and has even joined two different opposition party just to express his ill-feelings.
As a matter of fact, El Rufai was one of those northern governors and political heavyweights who supported Tinubu when it seemed the Buhari led administration was against him. He was very vocal and criticized the policy during the period before the 2023 presidential election when the administration illegally confiscated the citizen’s money in banks in the name of Naira redesigning policy.
The policy gravely affected the chances of the ruling party as millions of Nigerians suffered greatly. However, in a recent interview, even with his bugga dance with Tinubu after he won the election, El Rufai claimed he was never really close to the now president. He said his support for Tinubu’s presidential bid stemmed from two main factors — a request by some Islamic leaders from the south-west to back a Muslim candidate from the region, and his long-standing principle that power should rotate to the south after Buhari’s eight-year tenure, in line with a gentleman’s agreement within the party. “I don’t think we fell out. We just could not find areas of agreement. There was no equilibrium. We couldn’t agree,” he said.
He added that even if Tinubu’s offer to join his administration had materialised, he would have exited the federal cabinet “long ago” due to fundamental differences in approach and philosophy.
“Even if the offer Tinubu made to me had gone through, I’d have left the government long ago because the philosophy of this government is contrary to everything I had been taught as a Muslim, a northerner and as a Nigerian,” he said.
I personally do not think El Rufai deserves this self-inflicted meltdown that is making him to admit to a serious crime on a national television. This psychological breakdown is unnecessary; he has had his fair share in public service. He was appointed as an economic advisor by Abdusalami Abubakar in 1998. President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him as the director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, and secretary of the National Council of Privatisation. And in 2003, he was sworn in as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT. After his appointment was approved by the Senate. He would later accus two senators, Jonathan Zwingina and Ibrahim Mantu (deputy senate president), of asking him for a bribe of $414,000 before his nomination as a minister was approved. Both senators denied the accusation, with Mantu calling him a ‘pathological liar’. He became the governor of Kaduna State in 2015 where he served for eight years.
His recent experience is not new; he is a man plagued with several controversies. In 2012, when it was rumoured that the then Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, was sending the military to invade killer herdsmen settlement, he issued a warning to the military of the consequences via his Twitter handle thus: “We will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan payable one day no matter how long it takes.” In 2019, he warned foreign election observers, “the person who will come and intervene…will go back in body bags because nobody will come to Nigeria and tell us how to run our country.” He is also being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. The probe stems from allegations of corruption during his tenure as governor (2015–2023), including claims of financial mismanagement, irregular contract awards, loan mismanagement, and the siphoning of over ₦423 billion in state funds. Recently, Adeyanju Deji, a human right lawyer, accused him of detaining several people who criticized him, notably Datiyata, who was abducted from his home in Kaduna in 2019 in front of his family and has remained missing since then.
May Allah heal El Rufai, and may he not dissolve finally if his party does not win the 2027 election.
