huptin: What El Rufai did was an open defiance to the president's order, he also encouraged citizens to defy their president, this may be tantamount to declaring a war against the president which is treasonable.
The Southern Kaduna People’s Union on Friday, said the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, should be investigated following his opposition to the Federal Government’s directive that the old naira notes of N1000 and N500 have ceased to be legal tender effective February 17.
The PUNCH reports that while addressing the nation, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), said the old N500 and N1,000 banknotes were no longer legal tender in the country. He, however, said the old N200 note would be legal tender for the next 60 days, till April 10, 2023, while urging Nigerians to deposit their old N500 and 1000 notes with the CBN.
However, in complete disregard to the President’s directives on the N500, N1000 naira notes to be deposited in the various branches of the Central Bank of Nigeria across the country, El-Rufai mandated residents of the state to continue the use of the old naira notes, pending the determination of the matter which is before the Supreme Court.
The governor gave the directives in a state-wide broadcast on Thursday night.
But the SOKAPU in a statement by its Spokesperson, Luka Binniyat, argued that El-Rufai’s “desperation was not ordinary”, declaring that he (El-Rufai) should be investigated.
According to Binniyat, SOKAPU has been observing the curious ongoing drama between Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State and the Federal Government over the new Naira policy.
The statement read, “El-Rufai as it looks is heading a gang of APC governors bent on reversing the controversial Naira redesign and they have managed to get the Supreme Court to order a temporary stop to it. President Muhammadu Buhari and Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emiefele have refused to heed to the order of the Supreme Court in toto.
“The desperation of el-Rufai is not ordinary and we suggest that he should be investigated. However, El-Rufai has gone overboard in his reaction to the response of Buhari to the Supreme Court order.
“In his broadcast to the State last night, el-Rufai sounded desperate; he became unduly emotional and abusive and spoke with a lot of braggadocios in the typical manner that has been his public image. He even alleged that there was a plot to stop the 2023 general election and its place an interim government installed.
“He called on Kaduna State citizens to disobey the directives of President Buhari. He insisted that the N500 and N1000 notes are still legal tenders in Kaduna State, contrary to the position of the Federal Government and promised dire consequences on anyone who refused to make transactions with them in Kaduna State.
“It will therefore look like el-Rufai has declared himself a rebel. If this is not treason, then we need another definition of the word.
“If El-Rufai has such goodwill towards the people of Kaduna State why has he not approached the Supreme Court to force the Federal government to wipe out the so-called bandits that have taken over a large portion of Kaduna State creating their own government right under his nose?”
“We are yet to see El-Rufai make a case at the Supreme Court forcing the National Emergency Management Agency to give relief materials to the millions of IDPs in Kaduna State. SOKAPU does not know el-Rufai for charity towards his electorates; we have no records of him on empathy and sympathy to the suffering people of Kaduna State.
“From all accounts, el-Rufai’s most important concern is the flow of raw cash for seamless spendings during elections. But there may be more than meets the eyes. It has been said that there are a few powerful individuals and families that have stashed away billions of stolen Naira which they can’t put in the bank without raising suspicion.
“So, we want to appeal to our members not to be charmed by El-Rufai’s bravado towards the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Government as a genuine act of concern to the citizens.
“He cannot hide under the cover of the suffering we are going through as a result of the new Naira policy and wage his war.”
When the news story that the Supreme Court had gone rogue on critics of its recent judgments was first shared with me, my initial thought was that it had to be an internet hoax. I imagined it was impossible that a SC would ever single out individuals in the bid to justify itself. SC might respond to a peer institution if the need to give an account of itself arises, but to single out individuals critical of their functioning and threaten them? Preposterous! When they said, “Our silence must not be mistaken for weakness or cowardice,” what exactly do they plan to do? Do we no longer have the right to freely comment on our disaffection with the Supreme Court or any institution?
Second, the press release warning their critics was so badly written, so lacking the eloquence one would expect from an institution like the SC, that I thought there was no way that could have emanated from them. The statement read like the intellectually pretentious verbiage universities’ Student Union Government put out. The SC press release must have been written by a copyist who mistook verbosity, pomposity, and ostentatious use of -isms as the art of oratory. Even Customary Court officials display better rhetorical skills. After all the huff and puff in the piece, the SC still offered neither explanation nor clarity on their legal interpretations that drew the castigations in the first place. The hot air turned out to be a mere exercise in self-demystification.
Despite my initial skepticism that the SC could not have gone so low, the tactlessness they displayed by issuing that witless press release is common. Many Nigerian MDAs are similarly unserious. From the presidency to the EFCC, DSS, CBN, and so on, they simply write whatever their gut instincts dictate. Whether written or spoken, their statements give them away as an unserious bunch. Their output tells the degree to which they understand the significance of what they do, their respect for the public they supposedly serve, and their overall attitude to excellence.
The shock of the SC’s salvo was preceded by the ruling statement of the Chairman of the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, Terste Kume. He descended from his official capacity to add spite and belittlement to his ruling. By getting personal and petty enough to mock Governor Ademola Adeleke’s penchant for dancing, Kume gave himself away as frivolous. There is a reason the culture that bequeathed us the modern court system also has the saying, “as sober as a judge.” Officials whose pronouncements carry legal and moral weight are not supposed to fool around. Of all people, a judge should be aware that the language used in jurisprudence must be carefully thought out, each word carefully selected, and any trace of silliness expunged. That way, even when people disagree with your ruling, they will at least know that you took the issues seriously enough.
Once upon a time, judges were buffered from the visceral rage of the public by being remote. But now, the times have changed. We live in an era where social media has drastically changed the structure of communication between leaders and the led. In the analog age, individuals who needed to express their dissatisfaction would compose a letter, send it to the newspaper, and wait for a while before it was published. These days, the agenda-setting or regulating functions of the media has been severely undercut by social media. People no longer need to go through the media houses, and more people can vent at their leaders with an immediacy that was unimaginable some years ago.
Unfortunately, the brevity of distance also corresponds to the abbreviation of thoughts that sometimes go into these exchanges. In place of public officials who have taken their time to seriously think about what they say and how they should present their thoughts to a rageful public, get a set of people who shoot out their poorly processed thoughts like Molotov cocktails. In the bid to give it back to the inhabitants of the internet “fire-for-fire,” these people jump into the mindless gutter that sometimes typifies social media exchanges. Ultimately, they lower the public perception of the ethical and intellectual requirements necessary for their offices.
By responding to criticisms with an uncouth letter, the SC demeaned itself. They should not have done it. It was bad enough that they reacted at all, but even far worse they did it so poorly! Partly due to ideological leanings and judicial activism, some recent judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States have verged on the incredulous. The justices of SCOTUS have been severely criticised. Yet, not once did they make the court’s clerk respond to the rage. It would be beneath their status to barrack those who take issues with their judgment.
However, if the SC thinks that the public fumes at them because people do not understand the basis of their decisions and they fear that such dissatisfaction will erode public trust, then they should engage prudently. Rather than merely ask the head of the PR department to yell back, they should hire scribes trained in jurisprudence and are also elegant writers. We are not talking here about a civil servant merely redeployed from one ministry in the FCT to work in the Supreme Court like it is any other department. No, the SC should seek out talented people who can communicate the ambiguities of their decisions to the public thoughtfully and meaningfully. From universities to research institutions, Nigeria is full of talented and even-tempered people who understand what is at stake when an institution like the Supreme Court wants to justify itself to the public. They should find them and let them handle the SC’s communication with the public.
It is disingenuous for the SC to put out a press release blaming their critics for “disingenuously stand(ing) logic on its head to show their level of incredible dexterity… who have cultivated the unfashionable penchant of constantly attacking the Judiciary over every judgment or ruling given should better have a rethink….” Whether they want to admit it or not, everyone knows that judges are neither infallible nor incorruptible. Nigeria is endemically corrupt; there is no point pretending that people do not buy judgment from the courts at all levels of the judiciary. Those who suspect the SC’s moral compromised in the controversial cases did not merely pull their presumption out of thin air. In the recent past, we witnessed anti-corruption agencies arrest some judges—including those of the SC—for corruption. They need not feign righteousness to us.
If they have enough confidence in the merit of their verdicts, they should clearly and thoughtfully enunciate it. Merely vituperating and threatening critics give the impression they are hiding some bad behaviour. As for the person(s) who scribbled and signed that appalling press release on behalf of the SC, they should be redeployed to the stenography department where they are unlikely to do any future damage to the reputation of the Supreme Court. I will be kind enough to the person to say the person has passion for their job. The person is probably logophilic, going by how they pull random words from the thesaurus, threw them together, and arrived at ogbunigwe grammar like, “observe the caution gate of self-control,” and –my personal favorite— “a mood of bellicose jingoism.” Such a person must love their job; they just do not have the intellectual heft that writing such a document requires.
post=120996620: "I recognized his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue for long, but only to Nasir El - Rufai".
"I have heard of how he viciously savaged the reputation of his uncle, a man who was like his foster father".
"Character wise, Nasir has not much going for him".
"My vivid recollection of him is his penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories and his inability to sustain loyalty for long".
"I believe that he can still be used in public service under guidance and sufficient oversight, making allowance for the psychology of his petit size".
"He was described as a malicious liar. He was more than that; he is a pathological purveyor of untruths and half - truths with little or no regard for integrity".
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and erstwhile minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir El-Rufai, have resurrected the ghost of the controversial Pentascope deal through which the federal government tried to privatize Nigeria’s national telecoms carrier, the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, NITEL. The two politicians have been throwing verbal missiles at each while also accusing each other of corruption in a deal many believed was fraught with corruption.
Mr. El-Rufai fired the first salvo through his book “The Accidental Public Servant”, when he suggested that Atiku, as chairman of the National Council on Privatization, NCP, meddled in the privatisation of NITEL which ultimately truncated the process.
Atiku, in his capacity as the Vice President of the Federal Republic, was chairman of the NCP, the government committee entrusted with the responsibilty of managing the privatization programme initiated by the Olusegun Obasanjo adminstration to handle the disposal of public enterprises to interested Nigerians and other categories of investors.
Mr. El-Rufai alleged that Atiku’s meddlesomeness suggested he had pecuniary interest in some of the deals.
But Atiku fired back saying the former minister was bitter because a particular bidder, Motorola, lost out in one of the transactions.
“The fact of the contract are like this: Obasanjo agreed with the NCP that the former BPE DG was wrong not to have disclosed his interest and that he had failed the test of transparency by not disclosing that his brother was on the board of Motorola,” Atiku told The Punch.
“You know, for instance, that it is a very serious offence to fail, refuse or neglect to disclose your interest whether directly or through someone else, in dealing with such an important transaction. But, the President in his wisdom decided that the contract be split into three, with each of the contenders, Motorola, Ericsson and the Chinese company – I think Huawei – taking a portion. As if to vindicate the NCP, by 2007 when we left office, the two others apart from Motorola had completed their own contracts. You can go and find out if they (Motorola) have finished.
He continued, “I would like Nigerians to be smart enough to read between the lines. Why does the former FCT minister treat the Motorola issue with such persistent personal bitterness? Why is he making it a heavy matter? Anybody can play to the gallery and deceive the people. Transparency is a key issue of conducting any business, including privatisation. Conflict of interest is inconsistent with transparency.
“If you are a privatisation head and you have a relationship with a particular person connected with one of the companies making bids, it is a moral and legal duty to disclose that relationship or interest. Pretending that you have no relationship with the person who is rooting for a particular bidder is not altogether tidy and transparent. If he had no interest in a particular company for sentimental reasons, why is he making too much fuss about Motorola losing the bid?”
However, Atiku’s comment has sparked Mr. El-Rufai’s fury. On Monday, Mr. El-Rufai came out firing on all cylinders, pointedly accusing the former vice president of manipulating the deal.
“It is understandable that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar would be enduring some unease at the disclosures made in “The Accidental Public Servant”, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s recent book”, Muyiwa Adekeye, Media Advisor to Mr. El-Rufai said in a statement on Monday.
Paperwhite: Nope! Let the emilokan man turn out his touts on the streets of Lagos to see. You can sit in Lagos and decide how you go to Abuja to rule. Nigeria no be Lagos. Una no dey hear.
El Rufai has too many skeletons in the closet to be instigating rebellion against the Buhari led Federal Government cash policy to prevent vote buying and bribery.
Papichulostunne: I dont see the reason why El rufai is still walking free when he has committed the act of treason by refusing an executive order and reinstating his initial plot.
He has gotten away with too much over the years. And now thinks he can instigate rebellion and insurrection against the Buhari led federal government.
El-Rufai,Ganduje and Tinubu can flee abroad if the country goes on fire. They have billions of naira they have accumulated through there public service.
We only have one home and majority of Nigerians don't have means to leave the country if they follow there calls for insurrections against the Buhari led federal goverment and set the country on fire.
Politics › Re: Insurrection: Don’t Take El-Rufai’s ‘Desperation’ For Granted, SOKAPU Warns by kanupapilo(op): 1:04am On Feb 18, 2023
