‘Nigerians Should’ve Listened To El-Rufai’s Warning Against Buhari In 2010’

A former presidential aide, Reno Omokri, has regretted that Nigerians failed to heed Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s warning of October 4, 2010, against President Muhammadu Buhari’s alleged unsuitability for leadership due to his high-handedness.

Describing President Buhari as a “sectional and biased” leader, Omokri said El-Rufai’s account that the president’s “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known” should have signalled to them that he [Buhari] will allegedly be biased in handling national issues.

The media aide to former president Goodluck Jonathan said this after President Muhammadu Buhari reportedly said the killings in Zamfara State were far more than those of Plateau State where over 136 people recently died from suspected herdsmen attacks.

Omokri tweeted Friday morning, “To say that Buhari is too sectional and biased to govern Nigeria is an understatement. No wonder Nasir @elrufai said on October 4, 2010 that Buhari’s “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known”. We should have listened to El-Rufai!”

El-Rufai, who is the governor of Kaduna State, had reportedly made the remark on October 4, 2010, in a statement by one of his special advisers, Muyiwa Adekeye.

The statement quoted Governor El-Rufai as reminding “General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known.

“In 1984, Buhari allowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new. Against all canons of legal decency, he used retroactive laws to execute three young men for drug-peddling after they were convicted by a military tribunal and not regular courts of law.

The governor was quoted in the statement as saying, “Buhari was so high handed that he gave himself and his officials immunity even from truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4, against which truth was no defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history.”