By Ayo Kehinde
A former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday, said that he was not rejected by the National Assembly as a ministerial nominee but that President Bola Tinubu simply “changed his mind on the nomination”.
The Senate had in August 2023, withheld the confirmation of El-Rufai as a ministerial nominee over alleged petitions, as well as security reports by the Department of State Service (DSS).
Speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Monday, El-Rufai refuted the claim, insisting there was no report against him.
He said, “Since I left office and the President begged me publicly to come and serve in his government, I had my plans and told President Tinubu from day one when he asked me to support him, I said would, but I don’t want anything because politics in Nigeria is always about what do I get for giving you support.
“I had made money before coming into public office. I don’t need anything. After eight years in Kaduna, I was nearly burnt out. I was struggling for eight years and I wanted to take a break and I had my private plans.
“The president publicly appealed to me to put my plans on hold and through two months of negotiations, we finally agreed that he would nominate me as minister and there were certain conditions I attached to that.
“I think along the line, either the President changed his mind or something else. Please don’t believe the story that the National Assembly rejected me. The National Assembly had nothing to do with this, the President didn’t want me in his cabinet, he changed his mind. Whatever it is, I don’t care and I’ve moved on.
“Please don’t believe the story that the National Assembly rejected me, they had nothing to do with it, the president didn’t want me in his cabinet.
“What was the security issue the National Assembly had against me? Where is the report? There were far less qualified, less experienced that scaled through because the president made a call. He is a human being he’s entitled to change his mind.”
President Tinubu has made wide-ranging reforms ranging from the removal of petrol subsidy to the floating of the foreign exchange market. These policies are beginning to make some impact on the economy, with the naira stabilising and petrol scarcity ending.
However, the former Kaduna governor said he still has issues with some of these policies which “are wrong”.
“I support some of (Tinubu) policies. Most of the economic policies are the right orthodox policies, but the sequencing is wrong and the quality of the people implementing the reforms leaves much to be desired. And I think that some of the reforms are just wrong.
“You don’t address food inflation by destroying domestic agriculture. Food prices may be going down, but farmers are being impoverished because they are being made to compete with subsidised agricultural products from Europe and other countries. So I have issues with many of them, and I’m in touch with many senior officials of the administration, and I give them my opinion privately”, he added.
