On El-Rufa'i's leaked memo to President Buhari

In the last two weeks, the me­dia both print and online have been awashed with the story of governor Ahmed El-Rufa’i’s memo to Mr President, Muhammad Buhari. The letter was written on September 2016 but got leaked when president Muhammad Buhari returned from the medical vacation. The lengthy, nay voluminous memo has elicited mixed reaction from Nigerians. While some Nigeri­ans viewed the memo as apt and timely coming from Buhari’s close ally, others looked at it as naked betrayal from the gover­nor who rose to power through the help of Mr President. In the 30 pages memo,

El-rufai told president Buha­ri that the APC led government has not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected over night change but has failed to deliver even mun­dane matters of governance outside the success in fighting Boko Haram insurgency and corruption.

He also said in the letter that the “overall feeling even among our supporters today is that the APC government is not doing well”. He lashes on SGF and Chief of staff as inexperienced and clueless about APC and it’s internal politics at best as part of its formation and not being participants in the primaries, campaign and election prop­er. Although the governor has admitted that Buhari inherit­ed serious political, economy and governance problems that he had no hand in creating but now have a duty to solve. Inter­estingly, the governor outlined what he felt as the panacea or solution to the multi-facet prob­lems raised. Governor El-rufai is right to draw the attention of Mr President on salient nation­al issues. Besides being a gov­ernor, he is an arrow head that helped to midwife the present ruling party. Also, he knows the party manifesto and he is in bet­ter better position to tell Nigeri­ans whether president Muham­mad Buhari is implementing the policy thrust of his government based on party manifesto or not.

Prior to the recent leaked let­ter, the first lady, Aisha Buhari, raised a similar alarm. She ex­pressed her displeasure on how her husband was being con­trolled by some “cabal”; this compelled Mr President to re­spond dramatically that his wife belongs to the kitchen and the other room.

While El-rufai can advise or vent his anger to Mr Pres­ident, it does not necessari­ly mean through leaked memo to the public. There are various channels and El-rufai knows them. Nonetheless, El-rufa’i is also guilty of the same is­sues raised in his memo. Ka­duna APC has been embroiled in leadership crises with “Aki­da” faction led by chief of staff to the Senate president, Dr Ha­keem Baba Ahmed. It is also on record, those who worked for the success of El-rufa’i have not been recognised in terms of ap­pointments or even mere con­sultation on governance in the state. The likes of Dr Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Haruna Saeed, Isah Ashiru kudan, Senator Shehu Sani have a story to tell on how the governor relegated them to the background in spite of their enormous contribution to the victory of the party in the state. As the saying goes: who goes to equity must go with the clean hands; El-rufa’I’s hands are not clean.

•Mustapha sent this piece from Pambegua, Kaduna State. THE AUTHORITY