January 30, (THEWILL) – Former Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, disclosed on Thursday that he informed President Bola Tinubu he was not interested in serving in his administration.
The disclosure was in response to remarks by Daniel Bwala, the Special Adviser on Policy Communication to President Tinubu. Bwala had criticised El-Rufai for his recent comment on the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Speaking at a national conference in Abuja on Monday, El-Rufai accused the APC of abandoning its founding principles and fostering poor leadership, saying the party no longer practices internal democracy.
“I no longer recognise the APC. No party organ has met in two years—no caucus, no NEC, nothing. You don’t even know if it is a one-man show; it’s a zero-man show. You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-illiterates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today. The problems that led to the creation of the APC remain unresolved, but I no longer believe the APC is interested in addressing them. The distance between me and the party is widening”, he said.
However, Bwala criticised El-Rufai, interrogating his integrity by probing his view when he asked if his opinion about the APC would have changed if he had remained in Tinubu’s government.
“My senior brother, if you were to be in the government and cabinet, would you have held and expressed the same position? History is replete with examples. It is a government you participated in its formation that you now want to unseat”, Bwala asked.
Responding to Bwala in a post on X, El-Rufai said at no time he was interested in Tinubu’s government but would have said and done the same if he were a member of his administration.
He wrote: “Good morning, @BwalaDaniel. I was a cabinet minister 22 years ago and was clear to Asiwaju that I was not interested in any position in his future government.
“The pathetic manner in all of you latter-day converts to the Tinubu government make an issue of something that I never wanted in the first place is perhaps a reflection of the level of your moral flexibility.
“If I had remained in the Tinubu government, I would have said or done the same on the tragedy within a party I was a founder of, and the government that emerged from it — first in private sessions with those concerned, and then go public if no remedial actions are taken. Go and check my public service record from 1998.
“I am only responding to you because I still think you are a decent person who may need a job, and not in the class of Wendell Simlin and that Kaduna pretender that our voters retired in 2019 — these clowns are political mercenaries that receive humongous monthly stipends from the security vote to be the first to jump on X and other platforms to defend everything the Asiwaju government does or fails to do, no matter how indefensible it may be.
“Enjoy your special adviser position, my brother, but remember that allegiance to God and country comes first in the human scale of accountability, before any person or authority.”
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