By Pascal Oparada
The Senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Mallam Shehu Sani, on Friday took a swipe at the Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, calling him a religiously divisive person, who is more dangerous and a bigger evil than an ethnic bigot.
Sani was reacting to El-Rufai’s attack on former governor of Anambra State and the vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Peter Obi, on Friday.
El-Rufai who was reacting to a tweet in which a Twitter handle called Coalition of Buhari-Osibanjo Movement alleged that Obi bundled some northern people who engaged in menial jobs in Anambra back to the North when he was governor, called Obi a tribal bigot.
”In a swift moment of needless impulse, Peter Obi bundled some northerners, mostly those who engaged in menial jobs for survival & marched them in trailer load back to their base. To him, these guys had no business being in Anambra State”, the tweet said.
Peter Obi is a tribal bigot. He was widely quoted on national television that the SSS was right to detain me for 48 hours in an hotel in 2014 on the grounds that ”El-Rufai has no business being in Anambra State as it is not Katsina State”! I sued the SSS and awarded N4m damages. https://t.co/1BIG9WJpAJ
— Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai (@elrufai) November 9, 2018
This was in apparent response to Peter Obi’s tweet today in which he said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was not talking about the economy because they had failed. The tweet was then retweeted by Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s presidential candidate.
“From all indicators, our economy is failing. This is why the APC is talking about everything but the economy. Our people are hungry – they don’t need more failed promises and rhetoric,” Obi had said in the tweet.
From all indicators, our economy is failing. This is why the APC is talking about everything but the economy. Our people are hungry – they don’t need more failed promises and rhetoric.
— Peter Obi (@PeterGregoryObi) November 9, 2018
But El-Rufai’s allegation against Obi had been debunked severally even by three Northerners who served in the state as police commissioners when Obi was governor.
Speaking last week in Lagos on the allegation that he demolished mosques, chased the Hausa away from Anambra State, snubbed the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III, and shunned the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman’s attempt at mediation, when he was governor, Obi said it was mere concoction.
“As a matter of fact, the mosque at Onitsha was destroyed before I became governor,” he told journalists.
“The irony of this concoction is that I have been a friend of His Eminence, the Sultan right from my first year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1980 through his tenure as Nigeria’s Defence Attaché in Pakistan till the present.
“The fact is that the visit of his Eminence, during which I was alleged to have snubbed him was purely a courtesy call after which I personally accompanied him to see the Obi of Onitsha, Obi Alfred Achebe with whom he had a meeting.
“I also requested His Eminence to visit the Hausa community in the state during which I offered to rebuild and subsequently gave them the funds for that purpose.”
It is this same allegation that El-Rufai is doubling down on. But weighing in on the matter on Friday, Sani said the Kaduna State hovernor was worse than an ethnic bigot.
“An ethic bigot is a lesser evil than a divisively religious one,” the Senator told the governor.
An ethnic bigot is a lesser evil than a divisively religious one. pic.twitter.com/dMek6GMGBA
— Senator Shehu Sani (@ShehuSani) November 9, 2018
El-Rufai is not new to controversy having brawled on Twitter with so many people including Senator Ben Murray-Bruce.
