This is not a defence of former Governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai now in custodial detention with the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission ICPC, against the tirade directed at him last week by Minister of Defence General Christopher Musa.
As a matter of fact on the basis of El-Rufai's past uterrances and actions in his public life, many people in Kaduna and Nigeria may want to stop short at defending or praising him, considering his brilliance and the sterling achievements he recorded.
Nonetheless, El-Rufai as a person and public officer deserves not just deserve recognition for his role in public service, but also consideration that until found guilty for the charges he is being currently held by a competent court of jurisdiction, he is presumed innocent.
It would appear that for the Tinubu administration, El-Rufai is so much of a threat that they are not just content to lock him away even if they are finding it difficult to make the charges against him stick in court, they want to proceed to load other extraneous charges on the former Kaduna governor, that they are willing to dispense with decorum and etiquette in doing so.
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In the course of an interview he granted a television station last week, General Musa let rip a tirade of bile against El-Rufai. "El-Rufai did a lot of terrible things in Kaduna state. He divided the state into two", he said. General Musa went further to accuse El Rufai of "deliberately planning the killing of people in southern Kaduna....He told us he paid bandits. He told us he did this; he did that. He didn'nt hide it".
Such comments on developments in southern Kaduna are neither new nor profound; they are common fare among the high and low not just in Kaduna but across the country. But the danger is that those who make them do so with an entitlement that disregards the historical foundations of the issue, which often morphs quickly from verbal disagreements to violent conflicts with attendant consequences.
Present Kaduna state has been a major frontier between the Hausa-Fulani southward Muslim expansion and the resistance to it by the scores of non Hausa-Fulani ethnic groups that populate the area since pre-colonial times. The elements in this toxic relationship often takes the form of frequent raids for slaves, forced conversions in some cases, and capture and annexation of areas deemed to be fiercely stubborn and resistant. An added element to this situation was the coming of Christian missionaries who preached and subtly introduced Christianity as the tool for effective resistance against the Hausa-Fulani Muslim expansion into those areas. So contrary to General Musa's claim that El-Rufai as governor "divided Kaduna state into two" the grounds for conflict between the northern half of the state and the southern half has been laid since pre-colonial times.
As an "A" level student at the College of Arts and Science Zaria between 1977 and 1979 in the old Kaduna state I noticed these differences among the students. The Muslim Hausa-Fulani students from the northern parts of the state and the Christian Atyap, Kagoro, Jaba, Kamuku, koninkan, Gbagyi areas kept to themselves mostly though both were from the same state.
These differences were manifestly clear in all forms at the time how could El-Rufai then an undergraduate at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria be held responsible for what has been laid down several decades before he was even born?
Some responses to General Musa's comments have laboured to point out that the violent manifestations of the fault lines in Kaduna state first occured during the military regime of President Babangida in which thousands were killed and properties destroyed in Zangon Kataf. From that point to date the genie of sectarian violence had escaped from the bottle and mixed with the toxic factors of partisan politics, Kaduna State had become a killing field.
As a stakeholder in the state, General Musa is entitled to voice out his opinion about what is going on there. But what he cannot do is to use the podium of Defence Minister, which he currently occupies, to make the statements he made on El-Rufai. First, El-Rufai is currently under custody on charges bordering on alleged misappropriation of public finances and security breaches. As a senior cabinet minister under the same administration that has charged El-Rufai to court, such statements coming from General Musa would amount to influencing and compromising the case.
Secondly, General Musa cannot by any stretch of imagination be described as a flippant person. Coming from a man of his status in society if he made such grave allegations against El-Rufai, he must be prepared to provide evidence.
Thirdly, it is inappropriate for a public official to be clearly partisan on a matter that requires circumspection from him. Sure as a retired General with no burden of public office on him, General Musa is free to make such statements. But certainly not as a Defence Minister. Doing so will likely bring the office and by extention the administration he serves into consequential disrepute.
But is General Musa aware of the saying that he who lives in a glass house should not throw stones? Just as the general has accused El-Rufai of perpetrating acts of division in Kaduna as governor of the state, he (the General) can also be accused of being behind incidents of killings by the military he led as Chief of Defence Staff and now as Minister of Defence in Tudun Biri and many other predominantly muslim areas in Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara, Kebbi etc. Can he wriggle out of that?
Many people (myself included) used to have very high opinion of General Musa and have pencilled in their minds that he could one day be tapped to be president of Nigeria. But my estimation of him began to plummet when he seemed to have departed from the straight and narrow path of professionalism to the partisan and corruptible path of politicking.
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My point of divergence in this regard started when General Musa incredulously departed from the script he first stood vehemently that there was no attempted coup. When the issue first broke General Musa told Nigerians more than once that there was no such thing as a coup but only minor incidences of indiscipline from officers over issues of delayed promotions. But months after the same General Musa told Nigerians that there was indeed a coup attempt and went on to detail how the coup plotters had planned to kill him.
The instant case of General Musa laying allegations against El-Rufai bears similar resemblance to his volte face against the alleged coup plotters.
And while General Musa's statement on El-Rufai may indeed be true considering the statements and antecedents of the former governor while in office, it is highly unfortunate and regrettable that he did it while occupying a public position that calls for necessary caution and circumspection.
And in doing this no matter the truth embedded in General Musa's opinion on El-Rufai, it was procedural wrong of him to make such allegations without accompanying evidence and while occupying a sensitive public office that requires tact so as not to divide Nigerians in the same way he accuses El-Rufai of doing.
