By KEMI KASUMU
Fiery state administrator and Governor of Kaduna State, North West Nigeria, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has expressed concerns that some people in Nigeria’s seat of power, the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, do not want the All Progressives Congress (APC) to retain power from later this year.
By implication, the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s chance of winning the February 25 election is slim.
The DEFENDER reports that el-Rufai said this while answering questions on Channels Television’s morning show, Sunrise Daily programme, on Wednesday
The governor linked the reason for the elements’ action to the fact that their own candidate they presented for the APC presidential primaries last year failed to win.
Governor el-Rufai said the unidentified people he described as elements in the Villa are hiding behind President Muhammadu Buhari’s desire to do what is right.
His words: “I believe there are elements in the Villa that want us to lose the election because they didn’t get their way; they had their candidate. Their candidate did not win the primaries.
“They are trying to get us to lose the election, and they are hiding behind the president’s desire to do what he thinks is right. I will give two examples: this petroleum subsidy, which is costing the country trillions of Naira, was something that we all agreed would be removed. In fact, I had a discussion with the president and showed him why it had to go. Because how can you have a capital budget of N200b for federal roads and then spend N2 Trillion on petroleum subsidy? This was a conversation I had with the president in 2021 when the subsidy thing started rising. He was convinced. We left. It changed. Everyone in the government agreed, and it changed.
“The second example I will give is this currency redesign. You have to understand the president. People are blaming the governor of the Central Bank for the currency redesign, but No. You have to go back and look at the first outing of Buhari as president.
“He did this; the Buhari-Idiagbon regime changed our currency and did it in secrecy with a view to catching those that are stashing away illicit funds. It is a very good intention. The president has his right. But doing it at this time within the allotted time does not make any political or economic sense.”
