El-Rufai, Sani: The parting of ways?

 

Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai and Senator Shehu Sani, who are chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC), are always at loggerheads. Attempts by stakeholders to reconcile them have proved abortive. Correspondent ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE, who has been following the riff, explains the genesis of the disagreement and what it may portend for the party. 

The popular adage that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers, may not apply to the feud between Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State and the senator representing Kaduna Central in the Senate, Alhaji Shehu Sani. This is the view of many observers, who have been monitoring the disagreement between the two heavyweights of the Kaduna State All Progressives Congress (APC). Rather, according to the observers, it may end up undermining the harmony and cohesion within the ruling party.

This is because the major issues that separate the duo border on how best the party can deliver democracy dividends to the people. The personality clash between the governor and the human rights activist-turned politician, according to sources close to them, has been in existence before the coming of the APC government. It reared its head shortly after the inauguration of the government when El-Rufai started rolling out his policies. Sani wasted no time in voicing his opposition to the governor’s policies; he took to the media to criticise the policies.

One of such policies is the abolition of Ramadan, Sallah and Christmas largesse usually distributed to prominent persons and organisations. In El-Rufai’s view, the practice is detrimental to the progress of the state, because it entails wasting the resources meant for the development of the state on gifts to majority of people who could afford them.

Sani believes that it was insensitive on the part of the governor to cancel such gifts and he went further to revive it within his constituency. In fact, the senator got a new nickname, Mai Rakumi at the event where he distributed rams, cows and camels to his constituents.

Reacting to the development, a member of APC state executive, who doesn’t want to be named, the clash is a blessing in disguise. He said: “At least one good thing about the disagreement is that it is a win-win situation for the people. El-Rufai carried on in his resource saving move, yet the masses, particularly in Shehu Sani’s constituency, still benefited from Sallah largesse. The interesting thing is that majority of the beneficiaries of Sani’s gesture were not in the first place beneficiaries of the largesse that El-Rufai stopped.

“So, to people who got Sallah gift for the first time, courtesy of Senator Sani, will pray that the feud never ends; at least to compel their Senator who will always want to prove that El-Rufai is insensitive to their plight, to come home and dole out his Abuja largesse to them.”

Many observers are puzzle as to why a senator elected from the same platform with the governor should be at loggerheads. Some insist that it may have to do with the senator’s ambition to succeed El-Rufai by 2019. The situation became so bad that for every action taken by the El-Rufai’s administration, the senator representing Kaduna Central has a second opinion. For instance, at the outset, during the land recovery exercise, Sani, granted series of press interviews, condemning government’s action. Reports attributed to Sani said have accused El-Rufai of running the state “in such a way that he will end up ruining all of us, which I will not be part of. He has taken some steps which have only attracted anger from the general public against him”.

Sani added: “He is a governor, I’m also a senator. He is not bigger than me, neither am I bigger than him. So, as far as I’m concerned, whether El-Rufai is a governor or whatever, anything which he does that does not tally with what is supposed to be done, I will certainly tell him.”

Explaining the basis for his anger further, Sani said: “He (El-Rufai) is a technocrat, while I’m an activist and a revolutionary. So, my power base is the common people, the masses who constitute my strength. They are the people I have lived with and fought for over the years. The way the governor is running the affairs of government in Kaduna State is such, if care is not taken, we will all sink.

“He has to take into consideration the fact that he met people that were impoverished; that were muscled, harassed and demoralised by the former administration of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). So, first of all, they don’t need harsh policies that will further impoverish and alienate them. We need to carry them along, taking cognisance their peculiar situation. I fundamentally differ with him on that issue. For that reason, he has decided on his own not to even appoint people who identify with me in anyway and who are also seen to be from my camp.

“Kaduna is a place I have I lived all my life and since I came out of prison in 1998, I have never been out of Kaduna for more than two weeks and I’ve never been appointed to any public office which I will live in Abuja and not know what is happening in Kaduna. So, I can tell you that within Kaduna North, Kaduna South and metropolis of Kaduna, there is hardly any street that I don’t know anybody.”

However, contrary to the senator’ claim, a source close to the Kaduna State Government House said Sani is simply angry with El-Rufai because he was not consulted, and asked to make an input, before the list of nominees for appointment into positions as caretaker committee chairmen of the councils within his senatorial district, was drawn up.

Meanwhile, Sani was quoted as saying in an interview: “I want El-Rufai to succeed as a governor and give credit to our party, but we differ in two ways. The first is what he did to me personally and that was after the elections. He gave every elected stakeholder in Kaduna a slot in the positions, but when it came to my turn, he gave the slot to the person I defeated in the primaries. Will El- Rufai keep quiet if Buhari asks his opponent, Isah Ashiru, to present candidates for ministerial nominee and all the positions in the federal parastatals? Will he be happy? He will never be happy. He has amassed an army close to my territory and next thing is for me to fold my arms and see a missile landing in my house which I am not going to accept. What he cannot tolerate, he should try to shove down my throat. It is not possible.

“Having won the primaries and general elections, we had decided to work together for the success of the party. I won my senate elections before Nasir won his governorship elections. After the victory, Nasir set up a transition committee and put all the other senators, and even the senatorial candidate who lost the elections, without my name there. I had to draw his attention to that omission. As a sitting senator, there is no way a transition committee would be set up without my name there.

“He said it was an oversight and assured me that my name would be included. During his inauguration and swearing in, I was there. We went round during the campaigns. After he won, it came to the point of sharing positions, he asked me to send the list of my people for appointment, which I did. But he threw the list away and decided to allocate some commissioners to the other senator representing zone 1, and from my zone, he gave it to the person I defeated in the primaries. Even my local government, no appointment, not even a councillor was considered.

“So, what he was doing was simply gathering opposition and empowering people who are determined to fight me.  He never knew that I am an old fighter. He said he is stubborn, but he cannot be more stubborn than a person who spent so many years in jail. I believe Nasir’s men came to the political scene in 1999, whereas I have been in the trenches even before anybody heard of Nasir’s name. You go back to Abacha and Babangida eras and see how we stood up against military dictatorship and tyranny.”

On the issue of demolitions, Sani said: “I could not have said anything if Nasir said he was recovering lands from hospitals, schools, and the affected persons have been given alternative lands or where to go. When you see a house, one is talking about the entire family, consisting husband, wife, children, grandchildren and livelihood tied to the family.

“Nasir simply gave them two weeks to vacate before sending bulldozers to pull down everything. Abuja of 2007 is definitely not the same thing as Kaduna 2015. In a democracy, whatever you want to do people must be carried along.”

Even though, El-Rufai and his team avoided comments on the crisis, the rift took a new dimension when the party handed the serving senator an eleven months suspension from the party. The letter, signed by Ahmed Abdulhamid, Auwal Mai Anguwa and Aminu Alilan, Secretary, Public Relations Officer and Ex-officio respectively, stated that the decision was arrived at after a meeting held on December 27, 2015, which reviewed a subcommittee report on allegations made against the senator.

The letter, which stated that Sani’s criticism of El-Rufai and President Muhammadu Buhari violates the rules of engagement of the party, has only succeeded in fractionalising the party in the state. The letter added that the anti-party activities were so pronounced that hardly a week passes that his group will not be on air, criticising and challenging what it described as the enduring legacies of Mallam El-Rufai.

It added: “That his statement on national issues is not inconformity with that of the governor and the Government of Kaduna State. That he has remained consistently in confrontation with the good policies of the Government of Kaduna State and considering it anti-people’s policy.

“In view of the foregoing, we have unanimously agreed that Senator Shehu Sani, representing ward six, should be suspended for the period of eleven months and that henceforth he is disengaged in partaking or attending party activities in Kaduna State subject to other punitive measures respectively.”

The party at the state level did not waste time in confirming the suspension. But, in a swift reaction, the Special Adviser to Senator Shehu Sani on Political Matters, Suleiman Ahmed, said the suspension was issued by persons ignorant of the party construction.

He however said the suspension will not stop the senator from criticising or challenging El-Rufai’s “anti-masses policies”.

According to him, the persons were acting the scripts of Governor El-Rufai. In another reaction, the Senior Legislative Aide to Shehu Sani said the senator was never invited to any meetings and was never given any opportunity to defend himself and so the suspension is invalid.

Later, the National Vice Chairman and Zonal Chairman, North West, Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir, stormed Kaduna to convene what he called a reconciliatory meeting between the national body and some party stakeholders in Kaduna State. He used the occasion to declare Sani’s suspension invalid.

According to him, the right procedure was not followed in the suspension of the senator. He said: “We wish to state here that the purported suspension is invalid and not binding and is of no effect, the right procedure was not followed, and the national body is in receipt of a letter from the ward chairman, dissociating himself from the suspension and giving an insight into the matter.”

However, as Abdulkadir was departing Kaduna, the state APC said the National Vice Chairman was on his own, because he lacked power to lift the suspension slammed on Shehu Sani. The State Publicity Secretary, Salisu Tanko Wusono, said: “In lifting the suspension, Abdulkadir acted without the consent of the national leadership, contrary to Section 21 of the APC constitution.” He added that Abdulkadir’s action was a deliberate attempt to ridicule the party for his personal interest.