It’s unfortunate Tinubu picked el-Rufai – Shehu Sani

A former federal lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani, has described the nomination of former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, in the ministerial list of President Bola Tinubu, as “unfortunate”.

According to him, if Tinubu would not nominate former Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, for allegations against him, then El-Rufai should not also be nominated.

He added that since the ruling All Progressives Congress was still defending its choice of a Muslim-Muslim ticket, it was not also right to appoint El-Rufai who had openly pushed a supposed Islamisation agenda.

Sani, who represented the Kaduna North Senatorial District in the 8th Assembly, made the statements during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday evening.

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He said, “First of all, if you are nominating el-Rufai on the basis of transparency and integrity and you said maybe you shouldn’t appoint or nominate the former Governor of Kano State, Ganduje, by issues of allegations that have been online over the time, el-Rufai too has allegations against him. Because there is an outstanding issue of N32bn in a Federal Government property, the issue is now in court. Anybody can Google it and see. It is his being a governor in 2015 that stopped the continuation of that trial, and that issue is there before Justice (Binta)Nyako in the Federal High Court.

Secondly, this government has run under the Muslim-Muslim ticket, and it has been doing everything possible to appease and please the Christian population in this country that the government is not a theocracy, is not about Islamisation, is not about any religious agenda, and is just about a political strategy to win the election. Here, you are enlisting and employing a man who has by his record, and by his antecedent, and by his own utterances, appeared to be one of the most intolerant Nigerians in the history of this country”.

Sani, who is a member of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, further said the list was “expected to be a clean break from the past” and to also carry the names of men of integrity and honour and maintained that El-Rufai shouldn’t be on the list.
Asked about the quality of the ministerial list, Sani said, “Tinubu has enlisted and admitted people who betray others hoping that they will be faithful, loyal, and honest to him, and they will serve the country with all their strength. So, all we can say to him is, ‘So help him, God’”.