Shehu Sani, a former senator has disclosed that his long feud with the immediate past governor of Kaduna, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai was due to fundamental difference, adding the he and the former governor came from different ideological background.
In an interview with the Punch newspaper, Sani lampooned the former governor’s style of governance, saying he (El-Rufai) never carry along people who elected him into office in all his policies and programmes.
“I had a fundamental difference with the former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai. First, we don’t come from the same ideological background. In all my life, I had been an activist at a time when he was unknown until he was appointed the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises. You can never hear anything of El-Rufai before 1999, but we have been in the struggle. So, we found ourselves in a party that is called a merger, and by merger, people came with different political tendencies, ideas and inclinations. So, we found ourselves in the All Progressives Congress. It is until you marry a woman before you know if she is good or bad. So, we came to a party where we differed. I differed from him ideologically in the way he ran the affairs of Kaduna State.” Sani said.
Explaining further on why the former governor refused to support his ambition to return to senate in 2019, Sani recalled his opposition to the former governor’s attempt to borrow $350m during his tenure as senator, represented Kaduna Central between 2015 and 2019.
According to him, the loan request looked absurd as the former governor failed to explain in detail how the money would be expended and method of repayment.
“Now, he didn’t explain to us how he was going to pay the money; what he was going to do with the money; and how the money would be spent. We were not convinced. First of all, Kaduna State doesn’t have the resources to pay this money. Secondly, there was no transparency with the way that money was going to be managed.
“There is nothing wrong if you expand the city but you can do that with federal allocations and internally generated revenue. But you don’t have to go to Washington and borrow money when your state doesn’t make one dollar out of Nigeria. So, we differed on that and I said it. Today, Kaduna State is paying the price for it. Kaduna is indebted to about $600m and when this money was received from the World Bank, a dollar now is N940. So, it means that with only $600m, Kaduna will have to pay over N500bn. This is a state that depends on 80 per cent of federal allocation. The amount of debt in Kaduna State, if you factor in our federal allocation for a year, it’s within N120bn. So, if we are going to pay this loan, we will have zero federal allocation for five years.”
“Nasir El-Rufai met me on the national scene as a man who was already known. He also met me in the field of activism and also in politics. He just contested in 2015. He had never contested an election before then. And I won my election without anybody’s support. Buhari had to raise his (El-Rufai’s) hand for him to win the primary in 2015 and he (Buhari) had to also come to campaign for him to win. So, he was a product of Buhari. That’s why I said we differed ideologically in the way in which the state is being run. I told him that he’s used to fighting different people and getting away with it. But he’s fighting an old prisoner and a man who had spent over four years in prison, who had eaten with prisoners and had lived with warders and had been to many cells in his life and not like him when he was chased out by the Yar’Adua’s administration. People asked why I was still attacking him. When I left the Senate in 2019, Nasir El-Rufai kept attacking me for four years.
“I wasn’t the first person that a governor would remove. Adamu Mu’Azu of Bauchi had removed a senator; they removed Kwankwaso; Yuguda removed a senator, Bafarawa removed senators but when you remove a senator, you should let him be. For four years that I was out of the Senate, he (El-Rufai) was consistently attacking me in every media house and I told him that power was transient and that I would respond when he attacked me and I would continue to attack him when he must have left power.
WesternLifeNewsNG however recalled an interview Mr El-Rufai granted the Nation newspaper in February 2017, wherein the former governor stated the reason behind the conflict between him and former senator.
According to El-Rufai, the no love lost between the duo arose from his (El-Rufai) refusal to appoint as commissioners, nominees Senator Shehu Sani sent to him as commissioners in 2015.
El-Rufai said this action triggered the anger and media outbursts he has suffered in the hands of the senator.
He said that the nominees Sani sent to him for appointment were dropped because of lack of necessary academic competence and capacity to function as commissioners and not out of vendetta because Sani defeated his own candidate during the APC primaries.
The then governor said: “Shehu Sani’s first anger was that the list of commissioners came out and none from his list. In a state where there are about 10,000 PhDs that I have in my data base; I am not going to take a diploma holder and make him a commissioner just because he is Shehu Sani’s man. I don’t operate like that.” the then governor told the Nation newspaper.
He added that the Senator had a history of activism and that was why he depends so strongly on the media for support in his protests and criticism.
“Shehu Sani’s history is that he is an activist, of some type and it is up to you to determine the adjective.
“I think the problem is that because Shehu Sani’s mind is that of an activist, he thinks that the way to position himself…he thinks politics is being in the media all the time. Activism is different from politics.
