El-Rufai Was A Product Of Ex-President Buhari – Shehu Sani

A former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani, has said the immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, was a product of former President Muhmammadu Buhari.

Sani said El-Rufai had never contested any election before 2015 until he moved to the now-defunct Congress for Progressives Change (CPC), which formed part of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Buhari had to raise El-Rufai’s hand for him to win the primary in 2015, and he also had to come to campaign for him to win the governorship election.

Speaking with The Punch, Sani said the former governor met him on the national scene as a man who was already known, adding that he met me in the field of activism and politics.

He said: “Nasir El-Rufai met me on the national scene as a man who was already known. He also met me in the field of activism and also in politics. He just contested in 2015. He had never contested an election before then. And I won my election without anybody’s support. Buhari had to raise his (El-Rufai’s) hand for him to win the primary in 2015, and he (Buhari) also had to come to campaign for him to win. So, he was a product of Buhari.

“That’s why I said we differed ideologically in the way in which the state is being run. I told him that he’s used to fighting different people and getting away with it. But he’s fighting an old prisoner and a man who had spent over four years in prison, who had eaten with prisoners and had lived with warders and had been to many cells in his life and not like him when he was chased out by the Yar’Adua’s administration. People asked why I was still attacking him. When I left the Senate in 2019, Nasir El-Rufai kept attacking me for four years.

“I wasn’t the first person that a governor would remove. Adamu Mu’Azu of Bauchi had removed a senator; they removed Kwankwaso; Yuguda removed a Senator; Bafarawa removed senators, but when you remove a senator, you should let him be. For four years that I was out of the Senate, he (El-Rufai) was consistently attacking me in every media house, and I told him that power was transient and that I would respond when he attacked me, and I would continue to attack him when he must have left power.”