The raging altercation and exchanges of brickbats between Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser to the President, and former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has continued to gladden my heart and I wish it rages even more.
The reason for this is not because the problem of insecurity is trivial but because insecurity, especially in the North, is fundamentally the problem of the elite in the North. And both gladiators represent this class of people.
To say these elites in the north are the problem of the region is a truism. Not only have they led this nation more than any other part of the country but also when they are not fuelling crises to destabilise the country for political power, they choose to maintain a conspiratory silence in the face of the legion of challenges that face them as long as they are benefiting from the government of the day.
El-Rufai had, in an interview that drips with righteous indignation, accused the Bola Tinubu government of placating and rewarding bandits to dissuade them from killing Nigerians.
El-Rufai, who served as governor between 2015 and 2023, alleged that the policy of negotiating and compensating armed groups was a national directive championed by the Office of the National Security Adviser.
He said, “What I will not do is to pay bandits. They are paying bandits. They are empowering bandits. This is what this government has done. We have the evidence. They are paying bandits. They are empowering bandits.
“You do not negotiate from a position of weakness. You don’t empower your enemy. You don’t give him money to go on and buy more sophisticated weapons.”
He said what the government has been doing both at the national and state levels is buying the media from reporting it.
He insisted, however, that unlike the current government, he never paid off criminal groups.
He reaffirmed his stance that the current government has failed Nigerians on all fronts, including security, economy, and governance.
I chose to copiously quote El-Rufai because one finds it incredulous to come to terms with these words credited to El-Rufai. A man who has himself committed all the very same offences for which he now accuses the federal government.
Can this be the same El-Rufai that himself admittedly told the world in 2016 that he went into the forest to pay his kith and kin who were killing farmers in Kaduna?
Is this the same man that supported Sheik Gumi’s spurious trips to negotiate with bandits, until he confessed himself that he no longer supported Gumi’s role?
Sometime in 2021, this same hypocritical Governor Nasir el-Rufai when asked why the Buhari regime refused to clampdown on bandits and Boko Haram with the same swiftness agitators in the southern parts are dealt, he said terrorists do not have a recognised and centralised leadership hence cannot be compared to IPOB and its leader.
He said, “I was very happy (when Nnamdi Kanu was arrested) because, first he jumped bail, jeopardising his sureties.
“Nnamdi Kanu is the leader of IPOB, a proscribed organisation. He is identifiable, in constant communication and everyone knows where he is.
“Let’s take Boko Haram, for instance. Shekau was in hiding for the past 10 years and the military had been waging a war to get him.
“It is not like Shekau was in Saudi Arabia, sitting in one place, tweeting about the breakup of Nigeria or asking Boko Haram to go and kill Helen and Nasir el-Rufai.
“Nnamdi Kanu is in one place while Shekau is waging guerrilla warfare.
“Regarding bandits, they are not centralised under one leadership. Who is the head of the bandits? Who is the equivalent of Nmandi Kanu with banditry?
“Bandits are just collections of independent criminals. It is a business for them. It is not a case of Nigeria must break up.” How patently false!
Who were the ones negotiating with Sheik Gumi if these bandits and Boko Haram were not identifiable? How was it that Gumi could trace these terrorists in their so-called forest hideout, yet the government and military leadership at the time could not?
Meanwhile, note that the question was why the Buhari government was treating these people he called criminals with kid gloves and he was talking mumbo jumbo.
Boko Haram and bandits were killing hundreds and thousands of innocent Nigerians, but in the warped logic of El-Rufai, IPOB is a bigger problem to the government he was a part of. He believes Boko Haram, who had seized several local governments and hoisted their flags and were collecting taxes from locals to access their farms, were of a lesser threat to Nigeria’s unity.
When you also realise that it took intense pressure and criticism from the people for that government to finally brand these bandits as terrorists, then you will realise how hypocritical El-Rufai is.
When you also recall that the federal government as a state policy then supported by El-Rufai and their likes were promoting a spurious programme of deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration of these bandits, then you will begin to understand why the nation was never going to win the war under Buhari.
How can any rational and fair-minded person ever compare Boko Haram and bandits with IPOB. Did IPOB commit offences against the state? The answer is yes. But were their offences more grievous than that of Boko Haram and the bandits, the answer is an emphatic no.
By the way, can El-Rufai tell us how Kabiru Umar Abubakar Dikko (aka Kabiru Sokoto) was arrested and escaped in a state Governor’s Lodge after killing over 40 Christians in one day?
In my honest judgement only a psychopath can rationalise Buhari’s government invasion of Nnamdi Kanu’s home even when he was supposed to be on bail, with the heavy presence of soldiers shooting indiscriminately. Yet, el-Rufai still blamed him for jumping bail. Should he have allowed himself to be killed? Did El-Rufai ask Buhari why he attacked a man who was on bail granted him by a court or would they rather fault Kanu for running for his dear life?
Can El-Rufai also tell us in the eight years of the misrule of Buhari one significant arrest or trial they had of any bandit let alone killing any.
Again, as we said earlier here only the elite in the North can sincerely address the many anomalies that haunt them.
For selfish reasons, El-Rufai who spent eight years in the Buhari coven and did everything to be a part of Tinubu’s government but failed is suddenly pretending to be fighting for good governance.
The question now is, would he have been saying the same thing today if Tinubu had appointed him a minister?
How can an El-Rufai who, for eight years, was busy condemning and blaming Christian leaders while Fulani killer herders were sacking farmers and killing indiscriminately all through his reign, claim that Kaduna is worse today? Even the residents of Kaduna are saying otherwise today.
Finally, he also claimed that journalists were being bribed to kill the stories. Even in this era of social media, how many people can the government bribe to kill such stories?
