Uba Sani vs el-Rufai: We want apologies, not rants

The political battle between Senator Uba Sani and former Governor Nasir el-Rufai is now a matter of public interest because it affects governance in Kaduna. The African saying, “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers,” can be applied in this context. Those who see the fight from a moral perspective say it is nothing short […]

The political battle between Senator Uba Sani and former Governor Nasir el-Rufai is now a matter of public interest because it affects governance in Kaduna. The African saying, “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers,” can be applied in this context.

Those who see the fight from a moral perspective say it is nothing short of a bad example. Others say it is unnecessary given the present state of the economy. The fight only came into the limelight when “the boy” exposed his master’s alleged secret financial scandal. I call him so because Uba Sani classified himself as such during their handover ceremony in 2023. We still remember that he was the political adviser and, subsequently, a senator during el-Rufai’s reign as governor.

People also remember that, as a serving senator, Uba Sani declared to the media that he should be held liable if the then-governor, el-Rufai, failed to utilise the $350 million World Bank loan effectively. Naturally, El-Rufai did fail. He left Kaduna poorer than he found it, and this is one of the reasons for this conflict.

And here we are today. Both are shying away from the failure they assured people of. The blame is being shifted to two of el-Rufai’s cabinet members: Bashir Sa’idu and Jimi Lawal, while the big fish ranted on social media. The two even spent time in detention, which raised el-Rufai’s anxiety. This prompted him to make numerous social media posts, mainly attacking Uba Sani and the Tinubu administration.

This tweet from his verified X account generated a lot of traffic: “Every day I see this governor embarrassingly and sycophantically rambling, I used to wonder why? However, confirming that Federal Government ‘reimbursements, interventions and grants’ in excess of N150bn have been given selectively to Kaduna by Tinubu, in the last 18 months, now explains everything. By all means, defend Asiwaju for the conditional cash transfer. Asiwaju has earned it, coming from you. The people of Kaduna State will judge at the right time and place…”.

People with good moral standing know that if el-Rufai believes Uba Sani is as bad as he says, then he needs to look in the mirror to check his poor judgment of character. And before he says anything, he needs to recall how he cajoled everyone to support Uba Sani as governor. The people of Kaduna still remember that he single-handedly brought the present governor to power in a closely contested election marred by irregularities that ended in court.

I believe the former governor comes from a group of politicians who think the public has a short memory—meaning that people forget quickly. They change their tune and make contradictory statements with little regard for their past words. But he fails to realise that even though the public may not track every detail, changes to important details are easily noticed. This is why the public revisited a 2023 video to prompt them to rethink their positions.

The video was recorded during the official handover ceremony at the State House in Kaduna. El-Rufai said he was confident the governor would perform better than him. Similarly, Uba Sani confirmed that he worked under el-Rufai for decades and learnt almost everything he knows now from him. He affirmed that he rose to become the “head boy” in his group of boys. The same video also had Uba Sani exposing their land activities in Abuja and how his master, el-Rufai, helped him acquire many properties in Abuja.

Watching this video makes one realise that if Nigeria were a sane society, these two individuals would never be allowed to approach power with evidence like this.

Ideally, future generations should not be allowed to view this video or similar one because some may think this misconduct was acceptable in the past, given how they boast about it without considering the repercussions.

Their precedence shows that they engage in politics almost entirely for self-interest. They capitalised on the Buhari-APC bandwagon, which they later abandoned to take on reigning ventures. Like his new master, Tinubu, Uba Sani now sees his governorship as “his turn.”

An erstwhile Senator gave an example of how the governor is copying el-Rufai following the accusation that he has collected N150 billion from Tinubu and is keeping the funds secret from the public. Of course, it is easy to see that this is similar to how he ran Kaduna. But for the sake of posterity, we must maintain the principle that two wrongs do not make a right. If this accusation is true, then it must be condemned. If not, we must caution el-Rufai for this information because he is encouraging the evil behaviour of spreading misinformation.

Many accused el-Rufai of operating an opaque government and shielding himself from public scrutiny. The $350 million World Bank loans case remained mysterious until the State Assembly made the current probe public. Nonetheless, this does not give Uba Sani or any other leader the license to rule without transparency and accountability.

Yes, as a son of the soil in Kaduna, I agree that these two people will be judged at the appropriate time. But if they have any sense of responsibility, they should accept responsibility and apologise to us; the people may forgive them. This public fighting is affecting good governance.

For el-Rufai, he must accept his poor judgment of character. He has demonstrated the inability to detect the abilities of his “boy”, who worked for him for decades. He is the reason why Kaduna finds itself in this poor economic position.  However, we must also hold the present governor accountable because he stood as el-Rufai’s surety when the Senate approved the World Bank in 2020.