How Tinubu Saved Atiku From OBJ, El-Rufai

By Sam Omatseye

Somehow, the fiction has gone around that Nasir El-Rufai backed Uba Sani to be governor.

El-Rufai has allowed this untruth to fester for a number of reasons.

One, he wants them to call Governor Sani a traitor, so people who know El-Rufai’s biography of about-face would not focus on him, El-Rufai. Two, he wants to divert attention from the raft of questions over his handling of Kaduna State finances while he was governor. Three, he wants to make N150 billion bigger than N428 billion. It is his mathematics of duplicity.

That is his foul strategy. As a man who likes attention more than a god, he started this when he sat beside a man, Atiku, he first betrayed in public life. And, for irony, he was talking about loyalty. But on that panel, he emitted disloyalty. That is because he was too angry to know he was contradicting himself. It is the Shakespeare quote in his play Tempest: “I am vexed; bear with my weakness.”

To start with, Governor Uba Sani never enjoyed El-Rufai’s support to be governor. He won the primary in spite of him, just as President Tinubu won the APC primary in spite of Muhammadu Buhari. But this did not force Governor Sani into fury. As Churchill wrote, “in war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity.” That explained why he has never thrown any invective against his predecessor since he became governor. Last week, he described his relationship with El-Rufai as “cordial.” It turned out to be a bullet rather than an oil of gladness to the mallam. He fought back, rather than exchange the courtesy. For him any act of civility is dubious. Fight is better than nice.

It was then he threw a charge that the Tinubu government has given Kaduna N150 billion, and hence his successor has been in sync with the president.

Governor Sani has not confirmed the charge. My investigation shows the mallam does not have the facts. But Governor Sani has decided to give El-Rufai an arm rather than an ammunition.

But El-Rufai loves turbulence more than tranquility. He is not the sort who loves brotherly love. He must be very angry he has heard nothing from his successor. Maybe Governor Sani would respond tomorrow. I don’t know. But up to the time of writing, he has chosen the path of Michelle Obama. “When they go low, we go high.” El-Rufai does not know much about height.

The charge of N150 billion is a clever-by-half ploy to divert attention from the over N400 billion , comprising projects he has not accounted for. For the sake of argument, if the state received N150 billion from the Tinubu government, should El-Rufai not be happy.

They are trying to clean up after his mess, yet he is angry. He is angry that Kaduna people are going to get a relief? Is it not strange that someone wants to save your people and you are up in arms? Is he so insensitive to the people? Is it not the same governor that is uniting the state after El-Rufai drove a wedge between north and south of the state, between Muslims and Christians, between rich and poor? Is he angry because he has worked to beat down prices? Is he angry at the peace dividends in the state? Is he boiling because Birnin Gwari is now calm?

What he is doing is the great betrayal: of his own people. Is he not the one betraying is successor by his claptrap tongue?

But he is now in the same boat with Atiku, and pretending he is still in the APC. That is pharisaic. It is an act of cowardice not to state where he is. With his tongue he draws himself to APC but we can decode his own heart from his lips. Maybe the nation’s memory is short about El-Rufai’s past.

The social media is circulating a quote on how the Owu chief or OBJ characterized the former Kaduna State governor in his memoirs.

But let me show how even the same Atiku was saved by then Governor Bola Tinubu from Obj’s clutches who was using El-Rufai as his point man.

Atiku was vice president and was at war with President Obasanjo, who took him to court to rid him of his immunity. Obj wanted to nail him for abandoning the PDP and moving over to the Action Congress.

Tinubu’s AC had penciled him down to run for president against Obasanjo’s pick, the late Umar Yar Adua.

With Tinubu’s backing, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) defended Atiku showing that OBJ had no reason to undermine his immunity as vice president as guaranteed by the constitution. Those were the days that everyone accused OBJ of “overheating the polity.”

The Supreme Court ruled in Atiku’s favour. Miffed, Obj set up an administrative panel on Atiku, and who were those on the panel? Attorney general Bayo Ojo and, you guessed right, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who was then the FCT minister. For Obidients’ information, our own Oby Ezekwesili was a member.

The panel recommended the banning of Atiku from public office for six years. But they made a mistake in the panel report. They nailed OBJ’s old friend turned adversary, Oyewole Fasawe, for financial impropriety, after deploying its EFCC to arrest him.

With Tinubu’s backing again, Chief Olanipekun took up the gauntlet and shredded the case against Fasawe as a way of discrediting the whole administrative panel’s report. The court upheld Olanipekun’s brilliance and threw away the case against Fasawe and the whole recommendation of the report, including the six-year ban on Atiku. It was a blow to OBJ. Tinubu saved Atiku and made it possible for him to run for president. Or else, the Adamawa chieftain would have sulked in limbo – as he is now – until the election cycle of 2015. So, we can see how much ingratitude flows in Atiku’s blood.

I recall in the period, during a book launch in Lagos, Atiku described Tinubu as more than a friend but a brother. And on the podium, Tinubu nodded. It was the same time, after securing the AC ticket, that he picked Ben Obi as his running mate to defy the man who saved him. Some people are not worthy of their salvation. Of course, that ticket was an electoral disaster. The rest, as they say, is history.

But at this time, El-Rufai was still OBJ’s boy, though it was Atiku, who nominated him to high office and the graces of the then President Obasanjo. For a man like El-Rufai, he likes the life of the moment. When Atiku was his man, he could have groveled before him and drooled with the Shakespearean phrase: “how fine my master is.” He would say the same about OBJ later. I wonder if he is not saying the same about Atiku today. Atiku could not accuse him because his own record of pirouettes are as sordid as the former Kaduna State governor. He probably wants Governor Sani to say same to him and he is upset the governor is not bowing. He wanted what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience.”

Even the issue of the over N400 billion he has not accounted for was unveiled because, according to the governor and an investigation I conducted, the labour union wanted to shut down the state with industrial action. He had to show them the books, and explained the lack of finesse of his predecessor with the state’s resources. The labour leaders said so to this writer and was part of an over 5000-word expose in this newspaper last year. Governor Sani’s reluctance to cry out initially was part of his generosity to his friend and predecessor. But Mallam always has other ideas. Loyalty and conciliation are not part of them.