Ecological Fund: El-Rufai Fires Back At Jonathan, Says He Does Not Take Responsibility

Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna state, has described ex-President Goodluck Jonathan as one who cannot “take responsibility for anything”.

El-rufai was reacting to a statement credited to Jonathan, who accused the governor of having “an incurable knack for lying”.

EL-rufai had accused Jonathan of being partial in the distribution of the N2 billion ecological fund, saying 16 out of the 17 states that got the money were controlled by the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The Kaduna governor, who is chairman of the National Economic Council (NEC) ad hoc committee on the fund, made the accusation at the monthly NEC meeting held at the State House in Abuja on Thursday.

Reacting to the claim, Jonathan in a statement signed by his media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, said: “Nemesis catches up faster with liars than any other agent of evil.  El-Rufai was probably led by the gods against his own sinister plot to confess in another breath that states under non-PDP parties like APGA and Labour Party also benefitted.”

However, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, el-rufai said accused Jonathan of trying to divert attention from the “skewed” pattern of allocating the ecological fund.

“While this is unfortunate and calculated to draw the headlines, Dr. Jonathan strained to explain away this strange pattern of fund allocation. But the facts are not deniable. They are in official records, and cannot be erased by slinging mud at people,” el-Rufai said through his spokesman, Samuel Aruwan.

“As chairman of the NEC ad-hoc committee on the ecological fund, Nasir el-Rufai wishes to advise Jonathan to wait for the presentation of the final report of the committee before he responds.

“Former President Goodluck Jonathan is not a man that can take responsibility for anything.  In March 2015, not long after making a concession call to President Buhari, he summoned his party and asked its leadership to reject the results of an election whose winner he had congratulated in private. That effort at duplicity failed spectacularly and the will of the people prevailed.

“So, no one should be surprised that he is denying presiding over the skewed distribution of ecological fund. His denial begs the question. What special circumstances ensured that only states that were controlled by the PDP and its allied parties qualified for N2bn each?

“Almighty God made it possible for the sun to shine on all. But Jonathan exercised his powers as president as if he governed for only his party or his family. The Jonathan government was so conscious that there was something untoward with sharing public funds in that manner that they did not publicise the payments to their preferred states.

“Thankfully, Dr. Jonathan did not deny that the N2bn payments were skewed to certain states. His mindset in trying to create an equivalence between those payments and federal support for the green wall projects in some of the northern states can be easily seen as a disingenuous argument.”