President Jonathan's Special Assistant on New
Media, Reno Omokri, has responded to Mallam
El Rufai's interview yesterday where he called
Mr president incompetent. Reno's response
below...
Having read
Malam Nasir Elrufai's interview in
the Saturday Sun of September 14, 2013, I
am compelled to present facts to set the
records straight in order that the general
public is not misled by the machinations of
a man who is in dire need of prayers and
perhaps psychological assistance.
Nasir Elrufai said "Nothing can make
Jonathan succeed. He is grossly
incompetent, he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t
even understand the issues. I am sorry! I
know the man more than those that are
shouting with Jonathan because when he
was my friend, none of them even knew
him. I knew Jonathan as a deputy governor
in 2002. That was when I first met him and
we have been relating. So, all these new
found Jonathan lovers should just shut up.
I know him and I know what he can do and
what he cannot do. So, please, they should
just leave me alone. Those that want jobs
can go and take jobs. I don’t want".
Now, let me start by saying
that Nasir Elrufai lied when he said this and
there is documentary evidence to prove this.
For instance, contrary to what he said in this
interview, Nasir Elrufai at a meeting with
Ambassador John Campbell in April of 2007 said
that the then Vice Presidential nominee of the
People's Democratic Party, PDP,
Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan "is clean and
honest". Going further, Elrufai told the
ambassador that "Governor Jonathan was the
only candidate that met Obasanjo’s guidelines-
honesty and Ijaw”. Unknownto Elrufai, the
ambassador kept a record of their conversation
which is now a public record in America.
Beyond that, Nasir Elrufai, who had gone into
voluntary exile under the presidency of
Malam Umaru Musa Yar'adua after he was
accused of corruption and abuse of office while
he was minister of the Federal Capital Territory,
FCT, felt safe enough to return to Nigeria as
soon as President Jonathan ascended to power.
When Elrufai returned to Nigeria, in 2010, he
visited the President at Aso Rock Presidential
Villa on May 11, 2010, and was the first major
political figure to call on President Jonathan to
contest for the 2011 presidential
election. Elrufaialso praised President Jonathan
openly.
The Holy Bible says in James 1:8 "A double
minded man is unstable in all his ways". I think
this biblical verse best
describes Nasir Elrufai. Elrufai in this his latest
interview showers encomiums on Major
General Muhammadu
Buhari saying "I think that where Nigeria is
today, only someone like Buhari, with the
experience of having run the country before,
and having run it along certain principles of
discipline, integrity and accountability, that
Nigeria needs".
However, this is what the same Elrufai had to
say aboutBuhari on October 6 2010 " Mallam El-
Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he
has remained perpetually unelectable because
his record as military head of state, and
afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians
have wisely heeded. His insensitivity to
Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are
already well-known. In 1984, Buhariallowed 53
suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter
Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was
exchanging old currency for new. Against all
canons of legal decency, he used retroactive
laws to execute three young men for drug-
peddling after they were convicted by a military
tribunal and not regular courts of
law. Buhari was so high handed that he gave
himself and his officials immunity even from
truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4,
against which truth was no defence, was used to
jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as
a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the
essence of his intolerance. These are facts of
recent history. The story of counter-trade and
import licensing, the cornerstone
of Buhari’s stone-age economic strategy and
those whose interests it served, is a tale for
another day."
Now, how does one man go from warning the
nation aboutBuhari as a man unfit to govern
Nigeria and one who is perpetually unelectable
because of his parochial nature to saying that he
is the man that can best lead this nation?
Is it not obvious to all that there is more than
one personality in possession of the mind and
soul of this man called NasirElrufai? Can any
sane person trust the words of a man who is so
unstable?
Today, Elrufai, perhaps banking on what he
thinks is the short memory of
Nigerians is attempting to rewrite history. But it
is such a difficult task to paint over the truth
with a lie.
Nasir Elrufai wanted something from the
President which was why he visited him at the
Presidential Villa to heapunsolicited praise on
the president in 2010. When he did not get what
he wanted, he became bitter and since the days
of yore when the fox that could not get the
grapes tagged them 'sour grapes' to mask its
frustration, it has always been the habit of
persons who cannot compete on the basis of
ideas to give a dog a bad name in order to hang
it. Thus, Elrufai, having run out of ideas, has
tagged this administration as 'incompetent'. But
as they say in law, Res Ipsa Loquitor, (thefacts
speaks for themselves).
In just this past month alone, we have seen
a fulfilment of two major Jonathanian promises.
The Akanu Ibiam Airport is now officially an
International Airport as its facilities have been
upgraded to meet ICAO standards and it
received its first international commercial
flight. Also, the rail services have been revived
from Apapa Port to the North.
In these two instances, the Jonathan
administration has put money back in the
wallets of Nigerian citizens. Every time
someone flies internationally from
the Akanu Ibiam Airport, he saves sixty
thousand Naira that would have been spent
paying for connecting flights to Lagos, Port
Harcourt or Abuja. And every time you receive a
container by rail in Northern Nigeria
from Apapa Port, you would have savedperhaps
fifty thousand Naira that would have been spent
on additional cost from hauling your container
by road.
And this is just for last month. Time would not
permit me to highlight the 153 Almajiri schools
built in every state of the North to serve our
children who are engaged in the almajirinciform
of Qu'ranic education (a total of 400 are to be
delivered), or the ongoing reconstruction (not
repair) of the Lagos-Ibadan road for which 167
billion has already been reserved to prevent the
project being an abandoned project, or the
dredging of the River Niger up to Baro in Niger
state to make that port accessible to ships, or
the establishment of the Green Belt Zone along
Nigeria's Northern borders to end
desertification, or the signing of the HYPADEC
bill into law to enable the people of the Hydro
Electric producing areas benefit from their God
given resources, or the current massive multi
billion Naira efforts to save the Lake Chad from
drying up. This is besides the fact that those
states which did not have a federal university
prior to President Jonathan's ascendancy now
have at least one university, thanks to this
administration's establishment of nine new
universities.
I have identified these projects on purpose
because they were meant to be priority projects
of yore but were however left unattended until
one man called Jonathan Goodluck entered the
scene.
Why has it taken an "incompetent" President
Jonathan to grow Nigeria's economy at over 6%
per annum since he ascended to the presidency?
Why has it taken an "incompetent"
administration to get Nigeria to be promoted
from a "Low Income Nation" to a "Middle
Income Nation" by the World Bank? Again, it
took an incompetent administration to ensure
Nigeria won its first African Cup of Nations in 19
years. If previous administrations had been this
'incompetent', then Nigeria would have long
since overtaken South Africa as Africa's largest
economy, but we did not achieve this feat until
an 'incompetent' Jonathan was brought to office
by the votes of over 22 million Nigerians.
In this latest interview, Elrufai boasts that he is
a "self-made man". Even this statement is a sad
reflection of the irreligious state
of Nasir Elrufai's mind. People who say they are
"self made" should read The Book of Daniel and
see what God did to Nebuchadnezzar after he
made such a boast. Nobody is self made. Does it
make mathematical sense to believe that the
God who has numbered the hairs on your head
has no input into the opportunities that came
your way?
In a Wikileaks document, an identified
American diplomat revealed that Elrufai was
"personally known to him to be homeless"
before he got into government. Now Elrufai has
never sued the diplomat for libel or slander. But
today, this man who was known by a U.S.
diplomat to be homeless now boasts that " I was
already a self-made man when I came into
government". Since when did homelessness
amount to being "self-made"?
And Elrufai further showed his disconnect with
the realities around him when he boasted in his
interview that "there is no one who sat at the
table with us when we were making these
decisions and advancing these arguments that
have come out to say that what I wrote there
[his book, The Accidental Public Servant] is not
true". This statement is so easy to demolish. As
at the last count, the following persons have
come out very publicly on the front and back
pages of newspapers to say that
what Elrufai wrote is a lie; former Vice
President, Atiku Abubakar, former Economics
and Financial Crimes Commission
Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, former Central Bank
Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, former Imo State
Governor, Ikedi Ohakim amongst others. In
fact, NuhuRibadu was reported in the Punch of
February the 19th 2013 to have said that "There
is a huge integrity deficiency" inElrufai's book!
Does Elrufai have such a record for truth that
we can say that his word outweighs the words of
these gentlemen?
In any case, let me conclude by saying that
Malam NasirElrufai has problems that may not
be known to the generality of Nigerians and
certainly by his current bed fellows in the
All Progressive Congress. In his book, The
Accidental Public Servant, Elrufai had terrible
and nasty things to say about those whose backs
he had already climbed on and reserved
encomiums for those whose backs he needs to
climb on. That alone speaks volumes of his
character and should alert his current associates
to the proverb that a slave who sees his fellow
buried in shallow grave should know that he
would receive the same treatment when his
time comes.
Reno Omokri is Special Assistant (New
Media) to the President.
Regards,
Reno,
SOURCE: Linda Ikeji Blog