Anyone who knows Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State would certainly concede that the man has courage and does not shy away from battles. When he was in the opposition he threw hard pebbles at President Muhammadu Buhari, saying he had not fully come of age when the man took charge as military Head of State and thus should not make attempts to return to office.
All that has proven to be mere political talk as both men have found themselves in the same boat. El-Rufai would not say such things anymore about the man he persuaded to return to power and is now persuading to run again. When he focuses on anything, he gives it his all. In the wake of the last elections, when it had become obvious that el-Rufai was not in sync with the Jonathan administration, the man devoted time to writing hard-hitting articles disparaging the administration. He did it with a passion that bellied his membership of the former ruling party. That el-Rufai is cerebral is not in doubt and he deployed his cerebral fecundity in churning out articles against Jonathan’s regime. He became a beneficiary of that regime’s exit by emerging governor of Kaduna State. But the man has antecedents of taking the bull by the horns, exemplified in his desire to return the Federal Capital Territory to the ambit of its original master plan when he was minister there.
Buildings had showed up in unauthorized places. He sent the bulldozers to work and demolished such properties. Anyone who erred got the bitter side of the man who got the support of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his boss at the time. He is not new to demolitions. He does not shy away from battles, whether it is with teachers in the state, who got the boot for poor qualification and performance, or Nigeria Labour Congress, or an Islamic sect. He would come at you head-on. The governor also has political battles engaging his attention. Two senators in the state walk in parallel political lines with him. The battle has been raging since el-Rufai got the ticket to fly the ruling party’s flag for the governorship election in 2015. They see the governor as an Abuja-based “political outsider” who was foisted on them by the powers that control the party. What Senators Shehu Sani and Sulaiman Hunkuyi, his major political foes, did not know was that el-Rufai could fight hard and long. Now we know that he can also be brutal in a fight. About 10 days or so after Hunkuyi and opposition elements set up a parallel party office in Kaduna, purporting that their faction was recognsed by the national body of the All Progressive Congress (APC), the governor struck. They were gloating in victory but the governor knew that two captains could not be in one ship. He did something I consider brutal. The governor suddenly remembered that the building housing the factional office had been defaulting in ground and tenement rates. It reminded him of his reign in the Federal Capital Territory, where he used bulldozers on erring buildings. On a Tuesday morning, February 20, 2018, after the party faithful had finished their meeting the day before and declared that the battle line had been drawn with el-Rufai, bulldozers showed up at the building located on 11b, Sambo Road, in the state capital, Kaduna, and reduced it to rubble. The state government said the building, owned by one of the opposition leaders, Senator Hunkuyi, had defaulted in paying due revenue to government. El-Rufai has displayed raw power and apparent dictatorial tendencies. On the day of the incident, the senator wrote this on his twitter handle: “In the early hours of today, el-Rufai personally drove a bulldozer, accompanied by armoured tanks, to destroy my house at 11b Sambo Road. This is a new low, and fighting dirty with such low level of pettiness is indeed unprecedented in Kaduna State.”
He said the governor had also ordered the demolition of another house belonging to APC Deputy National Chairman NorthWest, Alhaji Inuwa Abdulkadir, months back. Hunkuyi wanted to make the point that the governor had deployed demolition as an instrument of vendetta against political opponents. The senator later said the destruction of his house was an “incident to grow democracy in the state.”
Government said the senator has not paid ground rent for the building since 2001. So the senator was on the bad side of the law, but is demolition the way to go? How come the Kaduna State government suddenly woke up to this fact in the heat of a political dispute between the senator and the governor? Is the senator the only erring person in the state or is he just a scapegoat? If the house had not become office of the opposition faction, would it have been visited with bulldozer? So many questions begging for answers.
The incident reminds one of the Obasanjo days when former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, had his airline grounded, sending hundreds of jobs away with it. Slok Airline never came back to the Nigerian airspace. It was politics of blood, where you attack the livelihood of opponents. The former governor alleged that Hallmark Bank, where he owned controlling shares, was also shut down for political reasons. El-Rufai says the senator and his ilk are “political traders” who use the state to enrich themselves. His spokesperson said the senator has tried thrice to be governor and failed and now seems to have become desperate with his bid.
Nothing justifies that demolition. The house could have been sealed. The owner could have been sued amid other measures other than destroying the house. It is difficult to tell any convincing story behind the demolition other than a brazen attack against an opposition element. This is the lower step to political assassination. This demolition might turn the table in favour of the senator. El-Rufai must not deploy politics of bulldozer against his opponents, for there is life after office. He will not be governor forever.