A public affairs commentator, Patrick Anum, has stated that the Department of State Security (DSS), got it right by raising an eyebrow over the ministerial nomination of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.
El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna state, was stalled by the DSS after his screening by the Nigerian state.
Reports say the DSS cited security reports on El-Rufai, capable of heating the polity.
The former governor has since informed President Bola Tinubu that he is no longer interested in the position, even if the DSS clears him.
Reacting to the situation, Anum said the DSS was right to have picked holes in El-Rufai’s nomination.
He stated that the former governor of Kaduna is a divisive figure who has consistently caused division in the state and beyond.
His words:
”El-Rufai, in a video, bragged publicly about bringing into perpetuity Moslem Fulani rulership in Kaduna state and how he has relegated the southern Kaduna people to the background.
”El Rufai also took these threats a step further. He imposed Fulani district heads in various areas in southern Kaduna, an area that has 65 ethnic nationalities that are neither Hausa nor Fulani.
”It didn’t end there; El-rufai changed the names of the southern Kaduna traditional stools so that Fulani migrants could lay claim to ethnic southern Kaduna stools and rule those ethnic groups in the future.
”He did it to the Gbagyi ethnic group, Fansuam and many others in the area.
”He balkanized the chiefdoms of the Adara king, whom he felt was getting too powerful and who refused to bow down to his whims and caprices, not to mention the suspicious circumstances of Agwom Adara’s death and all other rulers who disagreed with El Rufai.”
Anum alleged that the reforms El-Rufai performed in the state were restricted to certain areas and did not extend to the southern Kaduna people.
He accused the former governor of not visiting southern Kaduna when scores of indigenes were killed there.
He added:
”El-Rufai continued to beat the drums of war in the state when he came out to claim that Fulani were killed in the state without any visible evidence and was cautioned by the commissioner of police, who was later transferred.
”He was overheating the polity during the electioneering process because he knew it would spark reprisal attacks by Fulani militia and disrupt the process (which it did largely in the southern Kaduna areas where he knew he would not get sufficient votes).
”Lest we forget El-Rufai admitted to paying killers in foreign countries to stop killing (with taxpayers’ monies).”