Nigeria Newspapers Online

Reno Omokri, social commentator and aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has described Malam Nasir El-Rufai as a drowning man.

He said this while reacting to El-Rufai’s attack on Malam Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser.

While wading into the war of words between Ribadu, and Hajia Naja’atu Muhammad, a former Commissioner at the Police Service Commission (PSC), El-Rufai had accused the NSA of memory loss.

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Ribadu had demanded public apology and retraction from Muhammad whom he accused of lying against him in a Tik Tok video.

In the Tiktok video, Hajia Muhammad accused the NSA of serving in President Bola Tinubu’s government, whom he castigated when he was the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

But in a letter through his lawyer, Dr Ahmed Raji, SAN, the NSA said publicly or privately, he has never maintained such viewpoint.

He said the damage that had been done as a result of the Tiktok video was unquantifiable.

However, El-Rufai took side with Muhammad and accused Ribadu of having “serious amnesia.”

“The record of proceedings in the Senate will confirm that Nuhu made those statements, sometime in 2006. The subsequent Daily Trust report below of February 2007, reconfirms the essence of the statements.

“The conclusions of the Federal Executive Council in 2006, which can be subpoenaed from the Cabinet Secretariat of the SGF’s office contain the allegations. In that Special FEC meeting in which I was a member, Nuhu’s EFCC made similar presentations accusing many sitting officials, sometime in 2006.
These Council Conclusions will further remove all doubts. This is for the record and to remind the morally-flexible that at some point in our national life, silence is no longer golden,” he had said.

In a statement posted on his Facebook wall, Omokri said, “Malam Nasir el-Rufai is frustrated. He lost out in Kaduna, where the Governor has wisely refused to be his Man Friday, and he lost out in becoming a minister after Kaduna residents raised several petitions against him.

“In his bitterness, he has started drowning politically, and he wants to take Malam Nuhu Ribadu, perhaps the most honest Nigerian who ever lived, a man who rejected the largest bribe in Nigeria’s history.

“If you look at the so-called evidence he displayed against Malam Ribadu, in the form of a sensational headline from 2006, it does not invalidate what Malam Ribadu said. The then Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did not say that then-Governor Bola Tinubu was corrupt, had been investigated, found guilty, or had been indicted. He made a general statement about ALL serving Governors at that time, without excluding anyone.Malam Ribadu said that based on the general feeling at that time, they were lucky not to be in the same position as Governors Dariye and Alamieyeseigha. He did not say they had been investigated and found to be corrupt. He was speaking about the general perception about those Governors. Perception, as Nasir el-Rufai knows, is not reality.

“The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was a new agency at the time of that statement in 2005/6, and the head of the Commission needed to instil the fear of God in all Governors by reminding them that the EFCC was watching.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation also applies that psychological operations strategy, which is called a show of force. Shows of force are rhetoric or actions designed by a military or law enforcement body to instil fear of committing a crime in those vulnerable to temptation.

“Nasir el-Rufai mentioned the transcripts of the Federal Executive Council for that period, which he claims corroborate his assertions. If they exist, which they do not, then he is challenged to provide them.
The fact is that Malam Nuhu Ribadu did not say that President Bola Tinubu was corrupt when he was the Chairman of the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission.

“And how could Nuhu Ribadu have done that and become close friends with the same Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who engineered his emergence as the Presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria a mere four years later?

“Malam Nasir el-Rufai will have to do better than his current manipulations. On the contrary, it was he who accused General Buhari of corruption, only to turn around and become his chief vuvuzela within months.”