I am not a liar, El-Rufai tells Jonathan

L-R: Nasir el-Rufai, Goodluck Jonathan.

Governor Nasir el-Rufai has told former President Goodluck Jonathan that he is not a liar as claimed by the former leader.Addressing a news conference in Kaduna yesterday, El-Rufai’s spokesman, Mr. Samuel Aruwan, denied the ex-president’s claim as one of his latest smears which are untrue.

“Dr. Jonathan claimed El-Rufai is a liar, quoting sources that did not once mention any lie that can be attributed to him.

One of El- Rufai’s identified weaknesses in the Nigerian political space is his bluntness and fidelity to principles. Even his enemies admit that grudgingly about him,” the governor’s spokesman said.

It will be recalled that on Thursday, 25th May 2017, El- Rufai had, on May 25, presented an interim report of the National Economic Council (NEC) Ad-Hoc Committee on the Management of Ecological Fund, which had 11 members, including seven governors, ministers and permanent secretaries.

Following the presentation of the Interim Report, El-Rufai briefed the press on how 17 states each received N2 billion direct support from the Ecological Fund in 2013 as Chairman of the committee.

El-Rufai had said that the benefitting states were all PDP-controlled states or states that were sympathetic to it.

The Ad hoc Committee then advised NEC to reimburse states that didn’t benefit from the allocation, N2 billion each.

Speaking yesterday through Aruwan, el-Rufai said that former President Jonathan would have waited for the presentation of the final report of the committee before he responded by launching a personal attack against him.

The governor pointed out that Jonathan did not make a distinction between NEC committee and the person that was chairing it.

His words: “While this is unfortunate and calculated to draw the headlines, Dr. Jonathan strained to explain away this strange pattern of fund allocation. But the facts are not deniable.

They are in official records, and cannot be erased by slinging mud at people. “Former President Goodluck Jonathan is not a man that can take responsibility for anything.

In March 2015, not long after making a concession call to President Buhari, he summoned his party and asked its leadership to reject the results of an election whose winner he had congratulated in private.

That effort at duplicity failed spectacularly and the will of the people prevailed.

“So, no one should be surprised that he is denying presiding over the skewed distribution of ecological funds.

His denial begs the question.

What special circumstances ensured that only states that were controlled by the PDP and its allied parties qualified for N2 billion each?

“Is it not curious that not only were his allies the only ones who got the funds, but that the various ecological problems in all 17 states required the same N2 billion across the states?”

El Rufai noted that: “Jonathan exercised his powers as president as if he governed for only his party or his family.

The Jonathan government was so conscious that there was something untoward with sharing public funds in that manner that they did not publicize the payments to their preferred states.”