There is a new fake product in town. The unique selling point is that it is supposed to be popular with the Nigerian youth and thus in its daily offerings in face book and the company’s website, the product is wrapped as the champion of the youth. The one who will break the perennial cycle of unemployment and poverty currently ravaging the nation’s youth.
Perhaps this product is not convinced that it is buyable by the discerning Nigerian public and so every opportunity is taken advantage of in name dropping the legendary anti corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu as ‘my friend’ in the hope that the latter’s squeaky clean image will soon rub off him and perhaps bamboozle the Nigerian people.
Former FCT minster, Nasir El-Rufai seems to have received an old age conversion and immersion during his self imposed exile in United States. The diminutive politician clearly has embraced new technology in pursuing his political ambition like the U.S President Barack Obama did during his 2008 presidential campaign. But I am afraid, Nasir El Rufai, stop pretending you are not Obama!
While Obama ran for offices without a single criminal charge levelled against him by U.S authorities for more than a decade of his political career prior to his Presidential run, El rufai has managed to attract a handful in less than 5 years he served under Olusegun Obasanjo. He starts his political pitch burden by criminal charges that he pocketed nearly 32 Billion Naira belonging to the Nigerian people. He was said not to have ‘chop’ alone and where better to start than from his beloved wife, for whom he had no fear or guilty conscience, ‘trading’ converted juicy plots of lands belonging to the PHCN. Of course he has claimed that his wife is a bona fide citizen and could buy any plot of lands she desires. What he won’t tell you is that the code of conduct he swore to prohibited such practices and they have a name for it: NEPOTISM.
You would have expected El rufai to exhibit more consideration for the Nigerian public whose commonwealth he is said to have plundered, but not the haughty one. He has carried on as if these criminal charges are mere irritations. He pretends that he is been politically persecuted. A familiar cries of the Bode Georges, Ogbulafor, Tafa balogun, and Iboris of this realm. He will not let his criminal trial to reach its conclusion and perhaps declare him a saint. No. The people’s martyr must canonise himself and so he goes peddling falsehoods in paid news in our national newspapers like the Ibori character.
I must say at this point that I have nothing against Mr El Rufai. As the FCT minster he clearly showed that he is smart, competent and highly dangerous. His efficiency and good planning ensured that an estimated 150,000 school kids lost at least an academic year as their schools were bulldozed without contingency plans. His biggest credentials so far as the champion of the Nigerian youth must be his displacement of almost 4 million people during his ‘Abuja is not for the poor’ demolition exercise. Clearly such exercise must have benefited struggling youths and school leavers. In saner climes like India, yes India, slums are only demolished when government have made alternative plans for the dwellers.
More so, his new politics include blatant disrespect and disregard of ‘bad’ court orders as Abuja became a jungle with El Rufai as its King Gorilla.
Perhaps the most endearing antecedent of St El Rufai is his confession that he played a key role in drafting the Late Umaru Yaradua to run for president. He was so close that by his own admission he was among those that drafted Yaradua’s maiden speech. This is reason enough not to buy this fake product manufactured in Obasanjo factory.
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