Kwankwaso To El-Rufai: You Can’t Blackmail Tinubu Before Northerners

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano State, Alhaji (Dr.) Musa Illiyasu Kwankwaso, has accused former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai, of desperation and resorting to blackmail, and baseless concoctions against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the eyes of his loyalists, aimed at scuttling his second-term bid.

Kwankwaso, however, added that the coast is clear for President Tinubu to Aso Rock because there is no tangible politician that can be a stumbling block to his second bid. He noted that all those planning to contest for the presidency are tested and failed materials and cannot compete with the current president as far as elections are concerned.

He warned that all those negative moves have already died on arrival because the teeming masses and lovers of politics have understood Mallam El-Rufai’s antics, describing him as not only an expired politician but also someone who has been portrayed by the last by-election held in Kaduna as a politician with no grassroots support anymore.

Kwankwaso therefore said, “You cannot discourage and check out President Tinubu from the 2027 contest the way you did to former President Jonathan in 2015, using poverty, insecurity, and economic devastation, because your nefarious tendencies are known to everyone.”

Dr. Kwankwaso, who made this known on Monday in a statement he personally signed and issued to the press in Kano, said that Mallam El-Rufai has forgotten that himself and others used the same method of blackmail in 2015 against Jonathan.

According to him, “It is on notice that President Tinubu has not only done much on security, economy, and even poverty rates in the country, but he has drastically changed the narrative with many places being secured and prices of commodities being affordable.”

“The insecurity met on ground by President Tinubu is gradually becoming history, thanks to Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President, but people like El-Rufai are not happy with what is happening.”

Kwankwaso then challenged El-Rufai to come out with concrete evidence on what he alleged that the government of Tinubu is sponsoring banditry and other criminal acts in the country, “otherwise, he should shut up and allow the government to continue with the good things they are doing for the country.”

He alleged that “all the likes of El-Rufai are doing is to instigate Northern Nigeria against the government of Tinubu, but it is clear that Northerners are not stupid; they know what the government is doing from Birnin Gwari to Sokoto and Borno.”

“I wonder how a coalition of failures in the likes of El-Rufai, Atiku Abubakar, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and others would bring to the country, and among them, who is capable of doing a quarter of what Tinubu is doing today?” He then asked, “Is it Atiku, who failed as a Vice President, or El-Rufai, who today is facing alleged treacherous charges against Kaduna, or Kwankwaso, who also failed as a Minister of Defense and currently has no party to rely on?”

He therefore reminded that “in the last eight years of the Buhari government, which Nasiru El-Rufai was an active participant and advocate of supporting, they could not wipe away insecurities, economic hardship, while after meeting dollar rates at N160 during Jonathan, they left it for Tinubu to inherit it at N1500.”

“In any case, today Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, under the orders of the President and his full support, is every day crushing the bandits, Boko Haram, and other criminals with their commandants on a daily basis being killed or captured, while the nation itself is stabilizing gradually.”

“You can see, the greatest beneficiaries of these progresses are largely Northern Nigeria, as one can travel conveniently from Kano to Abuja, Birnin Gwari, Zamfara, Sokoto to Kebbi and Borno State, all these are the efforts of the Security Adviser who never sleeps and believes in what he is doing.”