Pray, El-Rufai does not derail us– Femi Adeoti Column

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FEMI ADEOTI COLUMN

He is in the forefront. He is leading the odd, ugly pack for the wrong
reason. Enfant terrible Nasir El-Rufai is it! He holds sway in the
heavily terrorist-infested Kaduna State. That’s not his immediate
concern.
All the same, he was a delight to watch last week. He dominated the
space. And he explored, exploited it to the very maximum.
He remains the rave of the moment. And he was truly ravenous and
ravening. Nobody but him! And, guess what, he enjoyed every moment
when it lasted. Or so he pretended.
El-Rufai is amusing. And watching him speak is amazing and appalling.
He does not know when and how to stop. No limit, no boundary. For him
alone the “the means justifies the end.” Strange? Even stranger things
he did.
First, he swapped roles with the opposition party. From that vantage
position, he did the absurd. He launched a ferocious onslaught on Aso
Rock, Abuja and its chief occupant.
He dared the so-called dreaded cabals. He was convinced they needed to
be checked. He actually called them out for war. And they are
responding, fighting back discreetly.
His allegation and claim: They are determined to scuttle Bola Ahmed
Tinubu’s presidential ambition. And their weapons: Naira re-design and
fuel crisis.
Not satisfied. He recruited like minds. Two of his governor-colleagues
fell for it: Bello Matawalle, Zamfara and Yahaya Bello, Kogi. Birds of
the same feather flock together.
Speed was their watchword. We knew they were self-centred. But we
never imagined they were that wicked and parochial.
We didn’t pretend all along. We knew we could not trust them any
longer. But it never crossed our fancy that these governors had gone
down that deep.
They boiled. They fumed. Not for our collective good but for faulty
motive. That way they will continue to boil until they’re burnt out.
We were rudely confronted with their shenanigans that Monday morning.
They rushed to the Supreme Court. They vowed that the naira renovation
must be put on hold.
And they got their evil prayer answered almost instantly. They claimed
they did it for us. They lied. We read their curled lips well.
Our children in government-owned universities were forced to stay home
for eight months for no fault of theirs. Fuel crisis has become
endless, our own way of life. They never saw the need to stand in the
gap for us.
They didn’t complain to Aso Rock, neither did they go to court.
Instead, their children are flown abroad. They get the best education
money can buy. And they flaunt this with reckless abandon.
Benue State Governor Sam Ortom remains a lone voice in the wilderness.
Daily, he cries his heart out against killer Fulani herdsmen. The
Presidency never heard him out for once.
His governor-brothers mock him to scorn. None of them would join
forces with him. Not even the latter-day “militant” El-Rufai. But the
naira redesign unites them.
They detest their vote-buying agenda being truncated, scuttled and
derailed. So? They all stood up to be counted. Where’s their shame?
They were never there for us. And they graphically displayed it one
more time. They got to office through empty promises. And they lived a
life of deceit throughout.
Since they claim to occupy the office for our sake, we still need to
interrogate them. Particularly with their streaming actions and
inactions. We wonder aloud: Did we actually elect these characters?
Nigeria can be likened to an enormous, bizarre kitchen. There, all
sorts of concoctions are recklessly thrown up. Issues that break other
nations into irreconcilable pieces. Here in our clime, they are mere
pastimes. We even make a mockery of them. And laugh heartily over
them. Serious matters matter to us no more. SAD!
The reason El-Rufai was emboldened. He became impatient in his
defiance and insubordination. He jettisoned his co-traveller
governors. He moved on unperturbed.
On Monday, February 7, 2023, he did the unthinkable. He practically
jumped out of his cage spitting fire. He roared to high heavens. He
poured out. He let off his pent-up anger. He ranted all the way. No
pretence about his real element.
He lost his self-control, he threw it to the wild winds. All known and
unknown cautions were ignored. He fought dirty, as if he would not
fight another fight.
El-Rufai vomited. He was cross, vexed. He angrily told his
trader-audience to rebel. In fact and indeed, he led the insurrection:
“Nasir El-Rufai, Uba Sani and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu promise you
that if we (APC) are elected, this policy will be changed. Everyone
will be given sufficient time to change their money.”
No ambiguity. The message is not lost on us. He meant every word
pronounced. He issued a counter-order:
“Stop taking your money to banks, keep them with you. Nobody can make
your money to become worthless. It is the law; nobody can do it.” He
even relied on the same law to justify his action
He was not done yet: “It’s just a matter of time, be patient. We have
18 days to the elections. Once the elections are over, you should
expect what Tinubu would say, which is the change of this policy.”
He was so certain: “You should help us pass this message to relatives.
Everyone should stop taking money to banks. Continue trading with the
old notes.”
Imagine. If this had come from any other part of the country but the
North! If it had been Nnamdi Kanu or Sunday Igboho!
El-Rufai clearly rocked the boat. His immunity is giving him uncanny
audacity. Guts for anti-people policies. And leading him to revolt
against the very citizens he swore to protect.
What absurdity! He needs to be halted fast. There should be no second
chance. It could be dangerous. A monumental disaster.
El-Rufai is just one lamentable and deplorable sampler. We are never
relevant in their wicked reckoning. To fan their conceited embers, we
come handy. They stick out their thick and fleshy necks.
Wicked souls all! Then they “humbly” reach out to us. We are turned to
a chessboard. They blab. They jive uninspiringly. They become
laughable in their defence of the downtrodden.
This species of leaders! They are our heavy crosses. And crushing us
to shreds. Pray that El-Rufai may not derail us.

TAKEAWAY
Awo’s prophetic message, 35 years after
This is indeed a sad and saddening takeaway. I stumbled upon it on a
social media platform. It frightens me to the marrow. I had read it
somewhere very long before this time. It never made such powerful
impact as it makes in these our perilous times, 35 years after. The
reason I share it here.
“Something within me tells me, loud and clear, that we have embarked
on a fruitless search. At the end of the day, when we imagine that the
new order is here, we would be terribly disappointed.
“In other words, at the threshold of our new social order, we would
see for ourselves that, as long as Nigerians remain what they are,
nothing clean, nothing principled, nothing ethical and nothing
idealistic can work with them.
“And Nigerians will remain what they are, unless the evils which now
dominate their hearts, at all levels and in all sectors of our
political, business and governmental activities, are exorcised.
“But I venture to assert that they will not be exorcised, and indeed
they will be firmly entrenched, unless God Himself imbues a vast
majority of us with a revolutionary change of attitude to life and
politics. Or, unless the dialectic processes, which have been at work
for some 20 years now, perforce, make us perceive the abominable filth
that abounds in our society, to the end that an inexorable abhorrence
of it will be quickened in our hearts and impel us to make drastic
changes for the better.
“There is, of course, an alternative option open to us: To succumb to
permanent social instability and chaos.”
– Obafemi Awolowo, February 28, 1986