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Three very serious allegations were made last week by the former Minister of the FCT and former Governor of Kaduna state Mallam Nasir El Rufai.
Firstly that he bugged Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the President’s National Security Advisor’s phone and is privy to his most sensitive conversations, secondly that the National Security Advisor’s office has imported large sums of dangerous chemical weapons into the country for unspecified purposes and thirdly that there is a conspiracy between the NSA and Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna state, his successor in office, to “destroy him” and “jail him for life”.
I have tried to stay away from the raging debate that followed these comments due to my longstanding friendship and respect for all three parties and their respective families but in view of the latest developments and in the light of these grave allegations I can no longer sit on the sidelines and maintain my silence.
Let me begin by saying that Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Mallam Nasir El Rufai, Governor Uba Sani and my goodself were closer than brothers during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Government and we worked closely as a tag team.
Uba Sani took over my old job as Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs when I was appointed as a Minister, Nasir was my colleague in cabinet and Nuhu headed the EFCC. WE all attended Federal Executive Council meetings and more often than not we were on the same page on most national issues and we presented our cases with candour and vigour without any fear or favour at such cabinet meetings which President Obasanjo graciously allowed us to do.
This was as far back as over 20 years ago!
Instead of going on television to say that I had bugged the NSA’s phone and allege a grand conspiracy that the Government of the day had imported chemical weapons to gas their opponents to death I presented my defence and stated my case calmly and cooly in court and in the end I won all four cases and was totally vindicated.
If you know you have done no wrong why can’t you calm down, pray to God, behave in a dignified manner, carry your cross, stop claiming that there is some kind of imaginary and nonsensical conspiracy against you emanating from Kaduna state and the NSA’s office and hope for the same?
If you know you are innocent why all the hot air, nauseating noise, goat-like bleating, delusionary assertions and wild accusations?
Why are you behaving like a snake or a chicken whose head has been cut off?
Do you consider yourself as being above the law?
You are not the first person that the security agencies attempted to arrest at the airport without a warrant or elsewhere and you will not be the first to be invited, arrested or detained and neither will you be the last.
These things have happened to most of us that chose the path of politics for our lives and it has been so since independence. All great leaders worth their salt have been detained, arrested, harassed, investigated, prosecuted and some even jailed at some point in their careers and those that have a clean spirit, whose innocence spoke for them and who are right before God have always prevailed and won back their freedom.
It happened to Sir Ahmadu Bello who was jailed for three months, Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was jailed for three years, President Olusegun Obasanjo who was jailed for three years, President Muhammadu Buhari who was under house arrest for three years, Vice President Alex Ekwueme who was in detention for three years, virtually all the major players in the First and Second Republic (many of whom even lost their lives) and so many others yet they took their plight with grace and an exemplary submission to the will of God like the great men they were and never accused the entire world of conspiring against them.
Neither did they give infantile, puerile and nonsensical interviews implying that the security organs of the state were importing chemical weapons to commit mass murder against opposition figures.
Like yours truly, Nuhu Ribadu comes from a long line of distinguished public servants and enlightened and educated people.
His father, Alhaji Ahmadu Ribadu OON MBE, a pure and full-blooded Fulani man was a Nigerian politician and a diplomat.
During the First Republic, he represented Adamawa East constituency in the Federal Parliament from 1959 to 1966 and held the position of Minister of State of Economic Development in the Government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.
He replaced the erstwhile Minister of Defence Alhaji Mohammadu Ribadu as the representative of their constituency in the cabinet after the latter passed on earlier that year.
Consequently Nuhu was not only born into the corridors of power and is a ranking member of Nigeria’s ultra elite ruling class, though I suspect he is reluctant to admit it, but he also understands and fully appreciates limits of that power and it’s complex nuances.
It is precisely for this reason that people are wary of granting power to such people and instead are more comfortable with those from the ruling class who, more often than not, exercise far more restraint and are mindful of the fact that such power is not only transient but also ephemeral.
They know, from experience, that it never lasts and that there is always a day of reckoning.
They know that It comes one day and it is gone the next and the lesson that one should learn from this, which Nasir has failed to do, is that whilst you enjoy it you had better wield it with equity, fairness, compassion and the fear of God seeking to better the lives of others rather than destroying them.
With this aside I close and conclude my contribution.
May God bless Nigeria.
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