Ex-governor of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai on Monday responded to knocks from a former presidential media aide Reno Omokri over his criticism of President Bola Tinubu.
El-Rufai earlier reacted to an article by a columnist Farooq Kperogi, accusing Tinubu of recruiting his tribesmen into the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC).
In the article titled “Tinubu’s Buharisation of the NNPC,” Mr Kperogi described as embarrassing the president’s “relentless Yorubacentric take-over of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC,” as the northerners did during President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
El-Rufai reacted to the article with the words, “DECEMBER MESSAGE: Two wrongs do not make a right. Sensible inclusion always trumps arrogant exclusion.”
His reaction however attracted backlash from the Presidency and Tinubu’s supporters.
Also, El-Rufai’s political opponent Shehu Sani said the former governor had no right to criticise Tinubu.
Sani claimed that Kaduna was an apartheid state under El-Rufai.
He wrote on X, “There were people who were silent when Buhari was fielding political offices with his kinsmen and have now found their voice to speak out when the equation doesn’t favour them.
“Let’s not make reference to the nepotism that marginalised Southern Kaduna for eight years. Kaduna was an apartheid state for eight years, he had said.”
Omokri, in a series of posts on social media, berated El-Rufai over the remark about Tinubu.
He wrote, “Just imagine, Nasir El-Rufai, a man who publicly admitted to using government money to pay killer herdsmen, is today complaining that the Tinubu administration is using government money to build a railway in Lagos.
“Maybe he would have preferred if the money was used to pay Boko Haram.”
Responding to Omokri’s attacks, El-Rufai shared old photos of the former describing Tinubu as a “drug baron” in the build-up to the presidential election.
He wrote, “NIGERIA UPDATE – The interesting lifecycle of Wendell Simlin, also sometimes retained as a political mercenary by any person or government that can pay.”
