el-Rufai’s tirade on Yar’adua in perspective

Hence it is that what started like a pass time for el-Rufai has now assumed the full throttle of a vocation as the former FCT minister has made it a point of duty to vilify not just the present administration but the person of the president as well, simply because of this well known fact. […]

Hence it is that what started like a pass time for el-Rufai has now assumed the full throttle of a vocation as the former FCT minister has made it a point of duty to vilify not just the present administration but the person of the president as well, simply because of this well known fact.

His hatred for the person of Mr. president owing largely to the fact that he has been stood down in that regard, has now welled up in him to the extent that if media reports are anything to go by, el-Rufai and a few of his friends are said to be trying abroad what they have never imagined doing at home: forming a political party with the sole manifesto of making sure Yar’adua does not come back as president of Nigeria in 2011.

Bu the adventure comes more like the circumlocution of a confusionist given what many people know to be the political antecedents of el-Rufai.

But because the former FCT minister likes to hear his own voice, he has plunged into a grand delusion by preferring to ignore his deficiencies while venting out spleen against the person of Mr. President much against the integrity and tact demanded of a person of his experience thereby exposing his underbelly which the veneer of public office had helped him to cover; that he is just an empty vessel.

Recently the former FCT minster was at it again when he accused Mr. President of incompetence. In what? You may tempted to ask.

Is it the president who has revived the hope Nigerians have in their country and in the judiciary in less than a year of his assuming office that el-Rufia is talking about?

Is it the same president who has achieved what all the former presidents and heads of states of this country could not achieve by resolving the Niger Delta crisis and by creating a ministry for the area to ensure development and the extension of amnesty to the militants which has been embraced by all to the commendation of the world that el-Rufai is talking about?

Is it the same president under whose tenure Nigeria secured a seat on the security council of the United Nations, or is it the same president, who has undertaken by far what stands out as the most ambitious infrastructural development of this country? One can go on and on, but like I said earlier el-Rufai will prefer not to notice any of these simply because Mr. President has tactically told him to go and prove he could do something for himself without leaning on public office and resources to claim his ingenuity.

To demonstrate how shameless el-Rufai could be, place all these side by side with the administration that el-Rufai was a key functionary in which there was no law, as those in office have no respect for the judiciary as they select the court judgments they obey. El-Rufai himself had flouted many court orders stopping him from carrying out demolition of properties whose cases do not go against the criteria set by government for demolition.

Or the fact that the administration el-Rufa’I served contributed in creating much of the problems being cleared by the present administration, like the militancy in the Niger delta, by sponsoring the youths as political thugs only to abandon them after election thereby leaving them with no option than to continue to unleash violence.

It is only in a country like Nigeria that people like el-Rufai could still raise their heads and talk after all the harm their actions and utterances had caused the nation in the past.

It is a well known el-Rufai principle that anything he does must pass for patriotism while the actions of others he does not approve must go down as villainy. That is why till date he does not see anything wrong with allocating plots of lands to his wives and relations first before any other Nigerian when he was FCT minister.

Trying to relish the publicity that comes with his recent claims, el-Rufai who was given a fair opportunity to defend his action while in public service ran abroad to live in self exile. Forgetting that many Nigerians know that he is only a fugitive afraid that his past would catch up with him, which is chiefly why he has refused to come to Nigeria to answer for his shortcomings, despite the fact that all the allegations against him have been made through the due processes and through the courts. Something which he contemptuously overlooked when he was in government.

The former FCT minster tried to make an issue out of his current travail at the consulate when the renewal of his passport was delayed. A saner Nigerian would have appreciated the intervention of  Mr. President who even went ahead to sack the person responsible, but for el-Rufai the media opportunity he has been angling for to be impertinent to Mr. President was more important to him.

El-Rufai instead of telling Nigerians the truth that he is sour graping because the president has shown he can actually do without him and does not need the nuisance of having such a person in his government, is busy explaining why he has turned against Yar’adua, whom he has initially supported, with further preposterous prevarications.

Yusuf is a public commentator