Civil rights activist and former lawmaker who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the defunct 8th National Assembly, Shehu Sani, has said that the administration of a former governor, Nasir El-Rufai, lacked integrity and credibility.
According to the former lawmaker, during El-Rufai’s leadership in Kaduna, the state was a victim of two types of banditry, on in the forests and the other in the Governemnt House.
Sani accused El-Rufai of allegedly building estates and malls for his children and leaving a mountain of foreign and domestic debts for the children of the poor in Kaduna State.
Sani was reacting to the statement of the spokesman of El-Rufai, Muyiwa Adekeye, who defended the former governor, saying that he served the state with integrity.
The statements by Adekeye and Senator Sani came amidst the adoption of a report by an ad-hoc committee of the Kaduna State House of Assembly, demanding the arrest of El-Rufai by anti-graft agents over embezzling the sum of N423 billion and plunging the state into debts from May 2015 to May 2023.
According to the report, most of the loans obtained under El-Rufai’s administration were not used for the purpose for which they were obtained and, in some cases, due process was not followed in securing the loans.
However, the former governor responded, insisting he led a government of integrity and competence during his eight-year administration.
El-Rufai said the report was a “politically motivated hatchet job,” insisting he served with integrity.
But, Sani, in a post on his X handle on Thursday, said he did not know what “serving with integrity means”.
The former lawmaker suggested that the next step is “to ensure the recovery of the stolen money from the leeches and vultures” who served under El-Rufai’s government.
“The Kaduna Assembly has done a good job. I wish to congratulate them. The next step is to ensure the recovery of our stolen money from those leeches and vultures. Kaduna state was simply plundered by fraudulent technocrats, thieving consultants, and contractors domiciled in Sir Kashim Ibrahim House.”
“For anyone who cared to go through that published report, I don’t know what serving with integrity means. Kaduna was a victim of two types of banditry: the one in our forests and the one in the Government House. They left behind estates and malls for their children and left behind a mountain of debt for the children of the poor,” Sani added.
