By John Ogunsemore
Former Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai said he would criticise the Bola Tinubu administration even if he were serving in the president’s cabinet.
El-Rufai said this in an X post on Thursday in response to a remark by presidential media aide, Daniel Bwala.
Bwala was reacting to the ex-governor’s recent comment that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has abandoned its ideals.
He queried why El-Rufai was allegedly trying to bring down the Tinubu government that he helped to bring into office.
“My senior brother, if you were to be in the government and cabinet, would you have held and expressed the same position? History is replete with examples. It is a government you participated in its formation, that you now want to unseat,” the presidential aide said.
Responding, El-Rufai stated that he made it clear to the president that he was not seeking to serve in his government.
He added that he would still have criticised any indefensible policy of the Tinubu administration even if he were in the president’s cabinet.
“I was cabinet minister 22 years ago, and was clear to Asiwaju that I was not interested in any position in his future government. The pathetic manner all of you latter-day converts to the Tinubu government make an issue of something that I never wanted in the first place is perhaps a reflection of the level of your moral flexibility.
“If I had remained in the Tinubu government, I will say or do the same on the tragedy within a party I was a founder, and the government that emerged from it – first in private sessions with those concerned, and then go public if no remedial actions are taken. Go and check my public service record from 1998.”
El-Rufai reiterated that he would not join “political mercenaries that receive humongous monthly stipends from the security vote to be the first to jump on X and other platforms to defend everything the Asiwaju government does or fails to do, no matter how indefensible it may be”.
