FANI-KAYODE REPLIES SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI ON ELRUFAI

 I read Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s article about of my friend Mallam Nasir El-Rufai with amusement (”Sanusi Lamido On El Rufai” on this same site @ Omojuwa.com) and I have to say that I was pleased with the fact that he wrote it. I am glad that he has reiterated his love for Nasir and expressed his tremendous respect for him. He has also spoken very well about Mallam Nuhu Ribadu who is also a good friend of mine and he has said that anyone that is their enemy is his enemy too. I am happy for him and when it comes to both Nasir and Nuhu most people know that these are precisely my sentiments as well. As I have always said these are the two people that gave me hope that we could have a united Nigeria again where northerners and southerners could live and work together. 

 

I cannot say the same about Sanusi Lamido Sanusi whom I have always found a little bit more complicated ever since I have known him in the days of the Progressive Acion Movement in 2001. We were both members of that vibrant political association and we often clashed in terms of our world viiew and our vision of what Nigeria should be. I remember those days with fondness and we have both come a long way since then. At that time,as he quite rightly said in his essay, I was a a regionalist and Yoruba nationalist who did not believe in a united Nigeria anymore simply due to what the Abacha administration had put our people through and due to the June 12th annulment.

I was also a hardline foot soldier of NADECO and I reflected the thinking of every self-respecting yoruba man at that time. I believed then, and I still belive today, that if we cannot have a Nigeria where all people are treated as equals regardless of tribe or faith then we should not have a Nigeria at all. People like Sanusi opposed that view and they believed, and possibly still do, that some Nigerians were born to rule and that some faiths are greater than others. And yes, at that time, my views about President Olusegun Obasanjo were precisely what Sanusi said. I, together with virtually every other self-respecting yoruba man at the time, regarded him as a tool of the north and that he was brought in to serve their interests in 1999 and as a pawn to stop the yorubas from breaking away. That is what we all believed and that is why Obasanjo was overwhelmingly rejected by his people in the 1999 Presidential election.

LAMIDO SANUSI WRITES ON NASIR ELRUFAI

By Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

I have one request to make and Allah is my helper. Any attack on Nasir el Rufai or on Nuhu Ribadu is an attack on me. Nasir is to my mind is one of the greatest and most patriotic Nigerians to have served in public office and he is by far the best FCT minister we have ever had. Like all of us he is not perfect. 

In my AIT interview I said I agreed with 90% of what he said a day before our interview and the two bits I didn’t agree with I stated: I don’t agree that there is no subsidy and I believe Nasir was quoting contributions from trusted experts which have been flying around recently including Prof Tam David West.

And we have debated this issue of accounting and economic concepts in this forum. I also do not agree that it is easy in the short-term to have massive fiscal retrenchment without a huge political backlash-indeed the fuel subsidy is one such case and retrenchment for instance would also bring people out.

But Nasir is one person for whom I have always had the highest level of personal respect. His integrity is beyond reproach-of course, people will say anything but after years of trying no one is yet able to show any evidence backing up allegations. Intellectually, I am yet to know anyone who can match him and this has been the case since the 1970s. Femi Fani-Kayode has written in Nasir’s defence but these are not Nasir’s words and if you knew Femi well you would not be surprised or bothered by his peculiar choice of language. I have seen Femi transit from a rabid ethnic chauvinist and christian fanatic who thought Obasanjo was a stooge of the backward Muslim north, to a minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet preaching national unity, and now to some freelance activist and public commentator.