Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Deputy National Secretary of the newly registered All Progressives Congress (APC), Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of allegedly infusing religion and ethnicity into the nation’s politics, thereby encouraging division among people. El-Rufai also described the administration of Vice President Namadi Sambo as governor of Kaduna State as a disaster, saying Sambo’s successor, the late Patrick Yakowa, had earlier complained about the huge debt incurred by Sambo. Speaking saturday on a radio programme , “Guest of the Week” aired on the Kaduna based Liberty FM, the APC chieftain maintained that it was unfortunate that Jonathan who comes from a minority ethnic group was causing division among Nigerians instead of making the whole of country his constituency. He alleged that it was unfortunate that Jonathan’s political handlers thought that if they introduce religion they will be able to divide the North and take the Christian part of the region to vote for Jonathan. “And if they introduce ethnicity, large enough does it, they will get the whole of the South. That’s their winning strategy and now they are surprised that after dividing the country they are finding it difficult to get the cooperation of everyone,” he said. El-Rufai stated further : “ If Jonathan is from minority, how did he get elected? Was he elected by his minority groups or by other Nigerians? “Because if we all decided to be ethnic, Jonathan cannot even win election outside Bayelsa State because apart from Bayelsa, there is no any other place where the Ijaws are not a minority in Nigeria. So when people like Edwin Clark, Jonathan play the ethnic and religious cards, I just look at them because it is not going to work. “The moment anyone resorts to ethnicity and religion, it is because he doesn’t have a better ground. If you are performing and doing the work of the people why do you need to resort to that? “It is really wrong and one of the tragedies of the Jonathan leadership is that whoever inherits the leadership of Nigeria will have to spend the first or second year repairing the trust and relationship between the various ethnic and religious groups. “Everything under Jonathan’s administration has been reduced to these two things which is unfortunate because politics is not about religion neither is it about ethnicity. “ Politics is about delivering services to the people and when you are good every ethnic group and religion will benefit. “ Our religion is private to us, our ethnicity is an accident of birth. This government have adopted that as a political strategy and by God’s grace the people of Nigeria have experienced it and knows that.” According to him, there are many dangers confronting the Nigerian nation, stressing that what is worrying is the kind of rhetoric coming out. Also commenting on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government in Kaduna State, El-Rufai maintained that apart from the administration of former Governor Ahmed Mohamed Makarfi, there had not been good leadership in the state. He said Kaduna State which ought to have been a beacon in the North had not had a good leadership after the administration of Makarfi. “We’ve not had leadership in Kaduna State since Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi left office as Governor. I know Governor Makarfi performed well in the state in terms of peace and infrastructures put in place. “Since he left, Namadi Sambo as a Governor was a disaster. He wasted the resources of the state and the state acquired debt that late Governor Yakowa complained to me about before his death. “So we need a better government in Kaduna State because Kaduna is too important to be governed below the quality... “ Kaduna should be an example or a beacon in the North that will set standards of governance which we don’t have right now,” he said.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 06:19:17 +0000
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