Former
Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has
alleged that Mallam Nuhu Ribadu tried to incriminate former President
Umaru Yar’Adua.
This he said happened when former
President Olusegun Obasanjo showed a preference for Yar’Adua as his
successor and not el-Rufai or the former chairman of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission.
El-Rufai said this in his new book, The Accidental Public Servant.
El-Rufai also alluded to the insistence of Ribadu to be made Obasanjo’s successor in the book.
He said the former boss of the anti-graft
agency was livid with anger the day Yar’Adua informed him that Obasanjo
had asked him to pick the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential
nomination form.
“Well, Obasanjo has not told me, and as
far as the Presidency is concerned, I have my candidate for the
presidency, and that is Nasir el-Rufai. I am going to speak to Obasanjo
about this,” Ribadu had told Yar’Adua, according to el-Rufai.
He said when it dawned on Ribadu that
Obasanjo was in support of Yar’Adua, the former police boss started
looking for incriminating petitions against him.
El-Rufai wrote, “Nuhu’s instinctive
reaction was that of a typical policeman – dusted up EFCC files and
combed for petitions against Umaru.
“Nuhu did not realise it at that time,
but he was the one in trouble, not Obasanjo or Umaru. He dusted up all
his files and found petitions against the then Katsina State governor
and launched investigations.
“He was clearly trying to take Yar’Adua out of the race and narrow all options to zero except for el-Rufai,” he said.
The investigations, he said, led to the
arrest of local government chairmen in the state, on the allegation of
diversion of local government funds.
The former minister said he had to
persuade Ribadu to stop the investigations, saying that people would
read meanings into all his actions.
“Anything you do henceforth will only
just confirm what people say about you –that you target people that
threaten certain interests. If you had been investigating Yar’Adua for a
year beforehand, that would have been different, but you were not. It
is too late to start now,” el-Rufai claimed he had told Ribadu.
El-Rufai also said leaving office as the President of Nigeria in 2003 was very painful for Obasanjo.
Writing under the sub-headline, ‘The
final breakfast,’ el-Rufai said the former President looked pale and sad
the day he was going to hand over power to his successor, the late
President Umaru Yar’Adua.
He said rather than being happy, Obasanjo looked as if he was going to be killed.
He wrote, “The sentiment of the breakfast
was for the most part upbeat, though it struck me that Obasanjo, that
morning, looked like he had grown several years older.
“He looked as if he was about to face
death – his skin was sallow and it was very clear that this was
difficult for him, like someone in the final hours before heading to the
electric chair.
“He did not eat any breakfast, he just
had some tea. I never thought of losing power as being that painful, but
he was visibly pained.”
But a source close to the former
President said that el-Rufai, who was Minister of the Federal Capital
Territory under Obasanjo, said he (el-Rufai) decided to deride the
former President because he did not anoint him as his successor.
He said el-Rufai had thought that the
former President would put him forward as his preferred choice instead
of supporting Yar’Adua.
The source said that the former Chairman
of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, had
told Obasanjo to narrow the search for his successor to only the former
minister of the FCT.
The source, also a former minister, said,
“el-Rufai is bellyaching. He has not forgiven Obasanjo for not asking
him to pick the PDP presidential nomination form, unlike Yar’Adua.
“He, with Ribadu backing him, had thought
that the President would make him his natural successor. The anger of
his rejection manifested in his new book.”
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