Going by the dexterity and zest with which Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai awkwardly throws his weight against the government and, most times, the personality of President Goodluck Jonathan, one cannot but agree that there is a cult of ignorance in Nigeria, especially since this Boko Haram madness deepened in Jonathan’s government…
People like the voluble El-Rufai have not refused to show their brand of
Boko Haram, which they in-a-roundabout-way tailored on the part of
intellectual discourse. But regrettably, they always misfire and show their
mountainous hatred for not only the government which Jonathan was duly
elected to head, but the person of Jonathan.
In not-too-far account, it could be presumed that El-Rufai blatantly
presupposed that the Jonathan government, Ndigbo and the once Niger Delta
insurgents were bent on measures to extirpate northerners. Being loquacious
and always looking for cheap publicity since his political relevance
expired, El-Rufai could be connected with the statement of ‘no Boko Haram’,
but that the government was supposedly using the Nigerian Forces to destroy
the activities and the people of Northern Nigeria, (because the man in the
helm-of-affairs of the country is from the South).
In El-Rufai’s known irritating approach to making comments before he
reasons, he was also credited with the statement that it was Ndigbo that
were in the art of planting the bombs “here and there”. He vehemently
extricated Boko Haram from being in existence.
But with the current pleas by the so-called northern leaders to bargain
with the group in seeing to the release of the Chibok students they said
were abducted, has further exposed the many lies and ethnic sentiment of
El-Rufai of using his intellect in the most indecorum form. Whether the
likes of El-Rufai want to make money from the government in their bid that
government should pay ransom in swap for the release of the girls or make
exchange with the alleged detained Boko Haram members in the prison, does
not meet the eyes.
Today, Nigerians have known better that all that El-Rufai has been
expending his energy for inguise of exhibiting his intellect is just
claptrap of ethnic and religious jingoism. El-Rufai’s rather
anti-intellectualism shames! The sad side of it is that his comments
continue to mislead the young-at-heart in the north who erroneously take
him as one of their big brothers, oblivious that his comments strains and
are nurtured by false notion.
Somebody would say that El-Rufai means: ‘my ignorance is just as good as
your knowledge.” El-Rufai is not a personality for change and not the one
whose comments are geared towards change, except the change of indirectly
bolstering one ethnic divide against another, which is getting completely
out of hand and he had been invited severally by security apparati to
substantiate his many ‘throwing fire on the mountain’ stances.
He is good at calling dissenters thugs, please, go ask Asari Dokubo. You
may say that Nigeria is unfortunate with this El-Rufai with his many
unedited comments that could have opened the doors of gulag for him many
times if the country were to eschew religious and bigmanism and tribal
sentiments in its cause of executing justice as enshrined in the
western-like constitution it operates.
El-Rufai oozes out outdated bitterness known of the northerners of the old,
although many of them from the north still believe the dummy they were sold
to by the ancient British colonial masters and mistresses that they were
‘born to rule Nigeria’ at all cost. It behooves any sensible persons to
imagine what could have been the fate of the Southerners in the hands of
the El-Rufais of this country if the oil in the South-East and South-South
were to be in the North. There, perhaps, could not have been ‘one Nigeria’
for a long time. Courtesy of the El-Rufais!
His comments are above the All Progressives Congress, APC, politicking in
all ramifications. El-Rufai’s new found occupation after being a failed
minister is about Jonathan, Ndigbo, South-South, South-East and calling any
supportive voice to Jonathan from the South thug. El-Rufai is not thinking
and talking about how to bring to life the natural resources in the country
which sources recently said that the country had over 20 untapped natural
resources across the country and these are also deposited in the north
where the El-Rufai comes from.
The revenue that El-Rufai was supposed to be talking about that should come
from the north is his pseudo-intellectualism to abuse the collective
sensibilities of this government and Nigerians who are not from the north
or who are in totality opposed to the madness called Boko Haram, which has
killed and destroyed many lives and the property of Southerners in the
north.
Let El-Rufai not see other people as lazy as he may be. He should know that
no Igbo person, South-South or South-East peoples care much about the
resources of this country the way northerners want to die for them in
seeing that they control the power and the resources of the country.
In ‘Waiting for Godot’ Samuel Beckett warns the likes of El-Rufai: “All I
know is that the hours are long… and constrain us to beguile them with
proceedings which … may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become
a habit.”
