EL-RUFAI: Trashing the procured article by Ibrahim Jubril and more importantly looking beyond it, By Uche Diala
Dr UCHE DIALA
Another reason why I feel compelled to weigh in is to prepare Nigerians for some other potential ulterior motives being hatched against Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. Otherwise, the 12-paragraph poorly written piece was filled with a load of speculations, unintelligent propaganda, half truths, outright lies, and deliberate misrepresentations of facts tinged with a generous dose of personal grievance and malice.
Yesterday, Saturday 25th January 2025, an article appeared on The Cable, Thisday and some other news media with the caption: “Nasir el-Rufai: Judging others, evading judgment”, supposedly written by a “Guest Writer” Ibrahim Jubril who claims to be a development economist from Zaria.
I am reacting to the article not because it merits or any deserves any response or on the strength or validity of its content. I am reacting to it because the article is clearly part of a larger orchestrated hatchet job by some elements bent on hoodwinking unsuspecting Nigerian and casting aspersions on one of the leaders of the current opposition in Nigeria with the sole aim of destabilising or at least distracting the opposition with a view to achieving a goal that is now very clear to Nigerians as we approach the 2027 general elections.
Another reason why I feel compelled to weigh in is to prepare Nigerians for some other potential ulterior motives being hatched against Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.
Otherwise, the 12-paragraph poorly written piece was filled with a load of speculations, unintelligent propaganda, half truths, outright lies, and deliberate misrepresentations of facts tinged with a generous dose of personal grievance and malice.
It is no secret that some people irked by the integrity, boldness, courage, outspokeness, intellectual sagacity, unmatched records, and intimidating profile of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai have stopped at nothing in their quest to throw any and everything at him to see what can stick. In a desperate bid to able say that he is like or no different than them, they have constantly procured hired hands and writers to cook up stories, but thus far, they have kept failing and will keep failing.
The writer, playing with words that he probably does not comprehend, writes thus:
“For years, El-Rufai fashioned himself as a moral sentinel in Nigeria’s turbulent political landscape. He spoke with unyielding certainty, governed with severity, and condemned with relish. Corruption, he suggested, was the vice of lesser men; accountability, the standard he alone seemed prepared to enforce. He was the puritan in a fallen city, forever ready to indict others for ethical failure. Yet the record now confronting his legacy tells a far more unsettling story.”
He goes further, exposing his lack of objectivity, insincerity, bakin cikin, personal grievance, and unhidden disdain for El-Rufai, thus:
“This reckoning matters because El-Rufai built his public identity on moral superiority. He was never content merely to govern; he appointed himself judge in the public square; swift to ascribe bad faith, eager to assign blame, unapologetic in his harsh verdicts against colleagues and critics alike. For daring to point out a seemingly innocuous error of the El Rufai administration, I was once exiled from my beloved Kaduna State for close to five years! El Rufai was then the Emperor of Kaduna and the all-knowing.”
Let It Be Clearly Stated.
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has never made any pretences that he was better than anyone else. He has never shied away from taking responsibility and acknowledging and owning his own shortcomings or limitations. He has always understood that leadership is a public trust. While striving to make the best of every position he has ever been privileged to hold as a public officer, he always equally strived, in line with the precepts of his Islamic faith, to do the best he can to be upright and accountable without apologies.
His well documented interventions, submissions and views on national issues, including on governance, politics and nation building, which span decades, have been one of a man who understands the issues with crystal clarity and one who is never shy to confront the difficult and uncomfortable issues and to present them in the most consistent, passionate, patriotic, courageous, intellectual, unhypocritical and brutally frank manner.
Mallam, as he is respectfully called, has never shied away from accountability. On the contrary, he has always publicly invited accountability and scrutiny. It is therefore funny to read such as presented by the writer. When has being courageous, frank, and aspiring to be good and a role model to others become sins?
Ridiculously, as ‘proof’ that El-Rufai is equally corrupt like the others, the writer, probably believing that every other Nigerian is intelligence challenged with an attenuated memory like he, throws in this:
“The comprehensive probe conducted by the Kaduna State House of Assembly into his eight-year administration has profoundly unsettled the mythology of spotless stewardship. The legislative findings; painstaking, expansive, and damning in implication, revealed a pattern of governance marked by extraordinary financial opacity. Massive loans contracted with limited safeguards, contracts whose execution bore little resemblance to their cost, withdrawals that strained the boundaries of due process, and an administrative culture dismissive of institutional restraint all featured prominently. What emerged was not the portrait of disciplined reform, but of power exercised with alarming latitude.”
Is it not laughable that all the writer could cite as concrete proof of corruption against El-Rufai is a regurgitation of the submissions of a committee set up by the Kaduna State House of Assembly under Governor Ubah Sani?
As a matter of fact, it would be recalled that in April 2024 (note the timing and timeline), the Kaduna State House of Assembly inaugurated a 13-member ad-hoc committee to examine the loans, grants, and project implementation in the state during the period El-Rufai was governor from 2015 to 2023.
When the committee presented its report in June 2024, it accused the former Governor of alleged diversion of public funds to the tune of N423 billion and money laundering, among other wild claims and recommended that the ex-governor should be investigated by appropriate law enforcement agencies for alleged diversion of funds and money laundering, but that is only one side of the story.
On the other side, not only did the former Governor deny all the allegations, the processes that led to that report were characterised by a lack of due process and fair hearing, reeking of an exercise embarked upon to achieve a preconceived or predetermined outcome. Aside from the fact that much of the information and records relied upon as well as assumptions made by the committee were either contrived, misleading or outrightly false, the former Governor was never invited to present any explanations or defence.
The question arises: How and when did claims or allegations of impropriety from a state assembly under the control of an executive Govervor become a verdict of guilt?
The writer, in his obvious unintelligent mischief, actually acknowledges that much when we wrote:
“El-Rufai’s defenders may argue that courts, not commentaries, will determine culpability. That investigations are not convictions. All of that is true.”
So, if he knows that, why did he go ahead to present a mere commentary as proof of guilt and culpability and to pronounce El-Rufai guilty as not charged? He confesses why in his next sentence, which actually was the real motive for the hatchet piece, thus: “But reputations are not undone by enemies alone; they are eroded by contradiction.”
For him, the court, truth, proven facts, and justice do not count. It is all about trying to taint the hard worn reputation of Nasir El-Rufai. The writer knows that many, especially “enemies” of El-Rufai like him, would read and not question or interrogate his so-called manufactured “contradictions”. As I said earlier, the modus operandi is, throw any and everything in the hope that something sticks, but there are many who would interrogate and see through the glaring mischief.
It is no surprise that this piece of unintelligent propaganda came on the heels of the no holds barred, intellectually loaded, brutally frank, and progressive submission by Mallam El-Rufai at the just concluded Daily Trust Dialogue event on 21st January 2026. Submissions which every patriotic and well-meaning Nigerian, even those who do not like El-Rufai, have applauded. The truth afterall is not amenable to our likes and dislikes.
Probably in a bid to distract from that timely, frank and sobering message to Nigerians, the writer and his hirers went ridiculously comical to the extent of insinuating that El-Rufai is on “self-exile”, while elevating “speculations” to the level of facts and proof.
He wrote: “As investigations advanced and prosecutions involving former aides commenced, El-Rufai’s conspicuous absence from Nigeria became impossible to ignore. Though no formal declaration of exile was made, his prolonged stay abroad, coinciding with mounting institutional scrutiny, has fueled widespread speculation. In Kaduna, most discerning persons are well aware that Mallam Nasir El Rufai has gone on self-exile; obviously running from prosecution for a plethora of fraud-related cases.” He continued: “That absence was briefly punctured at the 23rd Daily Trust Dialogue, where a speech attributed to him was read in his stead.”
This sums up the ridiculousness of the piece and why no reasonable person should take the writer and his sponsors seriously.
Let Me Be Clear.
▪︎ There is no subsisting investigation or even accusation against Mallam El-Rufai, neither are we aware of any investigations against him.
▪︎ There is no invitation to El-Rufai by any security or anti corruption agency in Nigeria, and there is no warrant of arrest by any security agency in Nigeria or anywhere in the world.
▪︎ Mallam Nasir El-Rufai is a Nigeria citizen who has a right to freedom of movement, including abroad, just like our President. He left office on May 29th, 2023, and has been around since then, publicly and visibly, travelling and returning to Nigeria as he pleased.
▪︎ He was out of the country to attend to personal matters and was billed to return for his next scheduled major public engagement, which was the Daily Trust event.
▪︎ Unfortunately he took ill and had to attend to his health. In spite of that, he sent in, not just a well articulated speech, but an equally thought-provoking video that immediately went viral. Anyone who saw him on that video would clearly see, both from his face and voice, that he had been quite ill. Yet out of a deep patriotism and sheer sense of responsibility and commitment, he rose to the occasion, as usual.
Probably, the powers that be are uncomfortable and pained that El-Rufai communicates and connects with Nigerians in a way that they could never do. I am honestly glad that most Nigerians are more intelligent and more serious minded than the writer of that piece, especially at this existential moment in the life of our nation.
As I Begin To Close.
It is not surprising to any discerning mind that the author of that piece made no pretences about the fact that he was writing to impress the current tenant in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House where El-Rufai handed over in 2023 after eight undeniably impactful years as Governor.
Unable to match the profile of his erstwhile mentor, the “headboy of Mallam’s mentees” adopted an approach of directly and indirectly antagonising his predecessor who has never interfered or sought to interfere with his administration (unlike in some other states), as if doing so would substitute for results or lack thereof or would mask the increasing stark contrast between what the state was in the immediate past and what it is today.
The writer, in obvious self-delusion, hypocritically wrote:
“Meanwhile, Kaduna State has moved on; and the contrast is instructive. Under the inclusive leadership of Senator Uba Sani, the state has begun a deliberate departure from the politics of discord that defined much of the previous era. Where confrontation once prevailed, dialogue is now emphasised. Where ethno-religious tension was inflamed, reconciliation is pursued. Governance has shifted from severity to stability, from spectacle to substance. Kaduna is calmer, more cohesive, and increasingly forward-looking. … The politics of constant antagonism has given way to an ethos of rebuilding: socially, economically, and morally.”
Well, I won’t bother about that, but one thing he said is true, though – “the contrast is instructive”. It is left for the good people of Kaduna state to pass the real verdict between yesterday (El-Rufai) and today (Sani) beyond the induced gerrymanderings and unintelligent vituperation of a mischief and vendetta driven writer.
In Closing.
It is most unfortunate how a privileged and powerful few insist on ‘killing’ our prophets, stiffling opposition, and recruiting willing, naive, and/or ignorant Nigerians into it.
The legendary Robert (Bob) Nester Marley sang in his ‘Redemption Song’: “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?” That is the same question I ask Nigerians today.
I urge well-meaning Nigerians to look beyond the jaundiced hatchet piece by Ibrahim Jubril to more ominous issues and threats that the piece only foreshadows, because that piece is only a decoy.
This calls for vigilance on the part of all democratic, progressive, and patriotic Nigerians, irrespective of political affiliation or whether you like El-Rufai or not. We should be prepared and stand ready so that we will not be taken unawares if and when the real plot against Mallam Nasir El-Rufai unfolds.
#GodSaveNigeria
#EyesOnTheBall
©️ Uche Diala
25th January 2026
