{NEWS ZONE} ~ TINUBU’S RECONCILIATORY MOVE, APC’S LAST PENALTY KICK – SHEHU SANI
Lawmaker representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, Senator Shehu Sani, tells LEKE BAIYEWU about his dispute with Governor Nasir el- Rufai, Kaduna State politics and the crisis in the All Progressives Congress , among other issues
You visited the national headquarters of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board in company with snake charmers . What inspired that visit?
This is the first time in the history of our country that we would see the involvement of animals literally in the affairs of the state. If you observe , at a certain time , rodents chased the President ( Muhammadu Buhari) out of his office . Later , we heard the story of a snake ingesting about N 36m . My presence ( at the JAMB office ) was symbolic. If the claims made by that woman ( accused JAMB official ) that snake actually ingested N 36m ; if it is a play or a drama, I felt that as a playwright, I should simply complete the drama by visiting JAMB office with snake charmers. It is an unbelievable story that a public servant could find such a way to justify such a clear case of corruption and thievery. So , my presence there was symbolic. I know that in case world renowned playwrights would want to write a play on it, there would be a part where snake charmers would be involved . If such had happened in the days of Williams Shakespeare , certainly there would have been a place for snake charmers. That is why I was there .
Why are you against Governor Nasir el - Rufai of Kaduna State ?
I don’ t know if the question should be on why I am against him or why we are against each other. First of all , I have said it repeatedly that Nasir el-Rufai and I came from different political backgrounds . He came from a political establishment and in the 16- year rule of the Peoples Democratic Party, which people like him condemn as corrupt and responsible for the underdevelopment of Nigeria , he spent 13 out of those 16 years ( in the party) . If we are going to say former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan are part of the problems in this country , and the logo of the PDP is a symbol of shame and disaster for Nigeria , certainly we can’ t do so without including the names of people like Nasir el-Rufai . He served as the Director of the Bureau of Public Enterprises and minister ( of the Federal Capital Territory ) . He is a full- time beneficiary of the PDP- led government . But unfortunately, people like him don’ t apologise for their own roles ; they prefer to advance their new image to their history .
I came from the civil rights movement; I have been a civil rights activist all my life. Our life was driven by principles and conscience , and our history is that of the struggle for freedom and democracy . While people like me were in the trenches , fighting for democratic rule and dislodgement of military dictatorship – from Ibrahim Babangida to Sani Abacha – people like Nasir el- Rufai were unknown. You will only hear of Nasir el-Rufai from 1999. So , someone like me is not a ‘ convertee’ in the philosophy of change; I was born into it and it has been part of my history , ideology and struggle . People like Nasir are part of the problem. If not for the likes of Nasir, Buhari could have been President in 2003 or 2007, but they undermined him and subverted him ; they worked against him . He was someone who did not see any value ( in Buhari) until now .
What are the other differences between you and el - Rufai?
We differ in history and we also differ ideologically . He is from the political right; the conservative neo -liberal and agent of Western imperialism . I am from the political left. My family, my parents all has a NEPU ( Northern Elements Progressives Union ) and PRP ( Peoples Redemption Party) history . So it has been our ideology.
At what point did your ideologies clash in Kaduna politics , which has now led to open confrontation today ?
The political difference arose in the run- up to the 2015 elections when I contested the Senate . I contested the Senate and I was not his favourite . His favourite was Senator ( Gen . ) Sani Saleh , who was the incumbent at that time. I defeated him and when I defeated him , Nasir now became aggrieved and started identifying with the person I defeated. As such , he did a number of things. First of all , when he assumed office , chairman of the party became the deputy chairman . The party had no chairman but a deputy chairman and the deputy chairman happened to be our candidate. He said he was not going to work with him , so he appointed a new person who virtually had legitimacy . Having appointed a new person, he also appointed about 16 to 18 members of the executive of the party into his cabinet. And by the constitution of the party, if you are appointed into an office , you will lose your place in the party office . That is why whenever you see them parading themselves, it is either acting secretary or acting publicity secretary . He is running an acting party in the state.
Then, he made it impossible for us to operate because it appeared that the party had become a parastatal of the government . So , we now have two factions of the party – we have the APC of the Government House and the APC Alkida . The APC Alkida is the one we are leading. We put up our own structures and a legitimate chairman of the party recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission but which Nasir does not want to work with . Then, a number of things happened . First of all , Nasir and his aides engineered some executives to suspend me . Even when the party at the national level told them that they were wrong, they refused to heed and continued to do what they did. Secondly, my office was attacked over 11 times by thugs who were armed . My home in Kaduna was also attacked by thugs . It reached a point that all these did not give Nasir peace . He and his aides were going through my school records – from primary to secondary to tertiary institution, my youth service – trying to check if I forged any documents. They even asked the Department of State Services to investigate me . They asked a lawyer to see how they could criminalise me . That also did not give them the peace they wanted .
Another stage of what they kept doing was spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money , using the radio stations to rubbish my reputation of being an anti -President Muhammadu Buhari person. That also did not incite people against me. The one that was done about five weeks ago : My aide was abducted by the military, tortured and framed in a murder case into which they were trying to drag me and my political forces . That also, by Allah’ s intervention , did not work . Imagine Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi , who was the director- general of his ( el-Rufai ) campaign . If not for Suleiman Hunkuyi , he could not have been a governor because the senator helped him to win the primary . If not for Suleiman Hunkuyi , certainly, many things could not have happened . Many of the people he has around himself today as aides were not even in the party. There was one pot-bellied, Teddy Bear- like political goon , who has paraded himself as his political adviser; who happened to have run for so many elections in the Peoples Democratic Party and did not win . These are the kinds of hangers- on and characters he has surrounded himself with .
Moving further , having seen all these forms of persecution and attacks and violence against my person, we decided that since Nasir refused to allow us to operate, to serve our people and operate as party men in the state, we simply had our own headquarters . Suleiman Hunkuyi volunteered his house. Now , he engineered the party to suspend me and Hunkuyi and expel others from the party. But when he was suspended , he lost his senses , stability and orderliness . This is what became of him .
Do you have confidence in the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu - led committee, appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari to resolve the crises in the state chapters of the APC , including Kaduna ?
I want to tell you that even before the idea of Bola Tinubu , reconciling or ( APC’ s National Deputy Chairman -South ) Segun Oni coming to Kaduna, you could see that there was an attempt by the party to bring peace to Kaduna . One was that they sent the National Vice -Chairman ( North- West) , Inuwa Abdul- Kadir, but Nasir demolished his house because the man was not doing his bidding. And he was even threatening the National Vice -Chairman . The Aminu Bello Masari committee was also set up to reconcile and all of us . We availed ourselves to Governor Masari but Nasir refused to cooperate with Masari . So , you could see that there is a history of disregard for reconciliation efforts .
So , are you saying that the Tinubu - led reconciliation move will not succeed in Kaduna ?
Like I have said , it is the last penalty kick . There are three types of fires for Tinubu to extinguish . There is a fire he can extinguish with a cup of water; there is a fire he can extinguish with a bucket of water; and there is a fire that he will have to drain an ocean in order to quench it . It has reached a point where he sent a bulldozer to demolish the office of our own APC. What I have said consistently is that you can see us with the man we have insisted is the chairman of the party today , but you will never see them or get a journalist in Kaduna to tell you that he has ever interviewed or attended any press conference addressed by the person who Nasir calls the acting chairman . The man can only say opening and closing prayers , he is simply a decoy . Why is everybody acting this and acting that in Kaduna APC? Where are the people who were elected ? People should ask those kinds of questions but they are not asking .
We don ’ t have a governor in Kaduna State ; we have a military administrator with a military mentality. His own thinking is that everybody should do what he wants them to do . But he is not only fighting us , he is fighting everybody ; he is fighting traditional rulers, sacking over 4, 000 of them . He is fighting teachers by sacking over 20, 000 of them . He is fighting local government workers by sacking 40, 000 of them . He is fighting Islamic religious leaders and Christian religious leaders . He is fighting the people of southern Kaduna , northern Kaduna and central Kaduna. Virtually , as you can see now , without unity in the party, the party has no future . The political oxygen of Nasir el-Rufai is Buhari . He feels that as long as Buhari can pick his calls ; go and see him ; tell him what to do ; he does not care because people will vote for him because of Buhari .
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