As the rift between the ex-governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, and his successor, Uba Sani, rages, officials who served under the former governor have declared support for him and praised his stewardship in office.
The ex-officials made their stance known in a statement Mr El-Rufai shared on Facebook.
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“Since June 2024, several of our colleagues have been invited and interrogated by the anti-corruption agencies,” they wrote, accusing Mr Sani’s government of being behind their ordeals.
PREMIUM TIMES reports that Messrs El-Rufai and Sani were allies before the 2023 general elections. Mr Sani, who was Mr El-Rufai’s advisor, had on many occasions pledged his loyalty to the former governor until he won the governorship race in 2023.
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Both parties now publicly criticise each other, although Mr Sani hardly mentions names in his criticisms.
Two fighting
Governor Sani, in an interview with TVC on Monday, accused Mr El-Rufai of being insincere with President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Although Mr Sani did not directly mention his predecessor’s name, his comment was in response to Mr El-Rufai’s remarks at an event in Abuja last week. Mr El-Rufai had accused the APC of poor leadership and encouraged opposition parties to merge ahead of the 2027 election.
Mr El-Rufai also said he was afraid that things might go out of hand if the current situation did not change.
“I can say it was really unfortunate because some of them were even calling for people to come out and take laws into their hands, oppose the government in a way that I feel is undemocratic,” Governor Sani said.
“Of course, I also want to make it clear here that if you ask me, when a democratic dispensation, and we have virtually just two and a half years to the next election, and any politician who feels he is popular or he can defeat Bola Ahmed Tinubu or APC —I think they need to go and work very hard and present themselves in the next election, which will be 2027,” he added.
As the rift continues, details of a corruption report produced by the Kaduna State House of Assembly, resurfaced online, prompting Mr El-Rufai’s allies to fight back.
The lawmakers had accused Mr El-Rufai’s administration of mismanaging billions of naira, an allegation he denies.
El-Rufai’s allies fight back
In their statement, Mr El-Rufai’s allies including former commissioners and members of the State Executive Council during his administration (2015-2023), criticised Governor Sani and accused him of witch-hunting them and their boss.
They reiterated their earlier statements issued in 2024 saying they rebutted the “lies and innuendos that both the Kaduna State Government and its lackey House of Assembly tried to pass off as an independent legislative report.”
An ad-hoc committee of the Kaduna State House of Assembly that investigated the past government accused it of misappropriating N423 billion. The committee recommended all commissioners of finance under Mr El-Rufai’s leadership to be investigated by “appropriate law enforcement agencies for thorough investigation.”
The same thing was recommended for other people who served under Mr El-Rufai.
The aggrieved officials said the Assembly has refused to provide them with certified true copies of the report. They said the resurgence of the report online can not be unconnected with the “recent comments of our leader Mallam Nasir el-Rufai on the state of the APC and the party’s departure from founding principles under its current managers.”
The former governor’s allies noted they have issued statements denying the claims in the House of Assembly’s report.
“The statements showed the gross earnings and expenditures of Kaduna State in those eight years. Only those inclined to fiction are able to entertain the claim that 40% of the state’s earnings in eight years went missing,” they explained. “We also demonstrated that several of the external loans the report listed were either not drawn at all by the El-Rufai administration or were due for disbursement only after its tenure had ended.”
They explained that their statements also addressed other areas pointed out in the report.
They said Mr El-Rufai’s administration achieved many strides for Kaduna and does not deserve to be maltreated by its successor.
“Mallam Nasir El-Rufai had in July 2024 filed a fundamental rights enforcement action at the Federal High Court in Kaduna against the denial of a fair hearing by the Kaduna State House of Assembly and the Kaduna State Government. His appeal is pending against the judgment of that court declining jurisdiction over the matter and its order remitting the case to the Kaduna State High Court,” they added.
The genesis of the feud
The face-off between Messers El-Rufai and Sani worsened when some officials of the former administration were arrested and later arraigned in court for corruption-related matters.
“Since June 2024, several of our colleagues have been invited and interrogated by the anti-corruption agencies,” Mr El-Rufai’s allies stated. “Two of them have been arraigned before the Federal High Court, Kaduna, on charges filed by the ICPC.”
They added: “Bashir Saidu was first abducted, Gestapo-style, on the streets of Kaduna on 31 December 2024 and taken to a magistrate court which remanded him in prison till 21 January 2024. He is still in prison despite being granted bail on the charges at the Federal High Court and in the other matter filed at the State High Court by the Uba Sani government. Jimi Lawal was also granted bail by the Federal High Court on the charges filed against him by the ICPC. Like Bashir Saidu, he remains in prison despite fulfilling his bail condition.”
But that was not the beginning of the feud between the former governor and his successor.
It all began after Mr Sani was sworn in as governor. Insiders in Mr Sani’s cabinet told PREMIUM TIMES that the feud started when Mr Sani started aligning with critics and political opponents of Mr El-Rufai.
“One of them was Samaila Suleiman who represented Kaduna North in the House of Representatives,” a source with direct knowledge of the matter said, explaining that Mr Suleiman was defeated by the former governor’s son, Bello El-Rufai, in the primaries ahead of the 2023 election.
“Sumaila Suleiman now decamped to PDP, but unfortunately for him, Bello El-Rufai won the election,” he explained further.
However, after Governor Sani was sworn in, he appointed Mr Suleiman as a special adviser “not minding the feud between him and the former governor, El-Rufai.”
Mr Suleiman subsequently rejoined the APC.
Other political opponents and critics of Mr El-Rufai that Governor Sani allied with are former governor Ramalan Yero, former senator Shehu Sani and John Dan Fulani.
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Mr Yero, the then governorship candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was defeated by Mr El-Rufai in the 2015 election.
“After El-Rufai won the election in 2015, Ramalan Yero got into troubles with the EFCC over N750 million allegedly given to him by former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki,” the source explained. “Yero assumed that El-Rufai engineered his arrest by the EFCC in Kaduna and because of that, they did not associate with each other again.”
Mr Yero joined the APC and was appointed as a special adviser by Governor Sani.
