Obasanjo boys are not happy with Elrufai
and speaking through one of their most prominent members who would
remain anonymous they communicated to this reporter.
Chatting to this reporter the well known
Obj boy said Elrufai had violated a spiritual principle found in
Proverbs 17:13 which says "If you repay good with evil, evil will never
leave your house."
According to this Obj boy well known for
his articulate and masterful command of the English language "you must
never bite the finger that fed you. You may disagree and criticize from
time to time but never try to destroy your benefactor"
Continuing he said the book "is a
hatchet job and not just criticism. No one has ever painted Obasanjo in
such a bad light. Please read the book. It is terrible"
Another Obj boy who spoke to a
journalist also added ‘‘We were not at the programme because we disagree
with some nonsensical things Nasir (el-Rufai) wrote in his book so we
ignored his invitation as a solidarity with (former) President Obasanjo
whom we all have a tremendous respect for. We wish Nasir best of luck in
his political adventure. But we strongly believed it is only an ingrate
that bite the hand that fed him.’’
It would be recalled that the book launch by Elrufai was mostly attended by his new friends and boycotted by his old friends.
Also, none of the people Elrufai served
under attended his programmer including Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar,
President Obasanjo and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar attended.
The CBN Governor, Sanusi, recalled how
the late former president Umaru Yar‘Adua appointed him as the CBN
governor without knowing him but based on merit and what he could
contribute to the polity. On his encounter with the late president
before his appointment as the CBN chief, hee said: “President Yar’Adua
was somebody I had never met in my life before February 2009.
I had never met him. I was told that he
wanted to see me and he met me and had a conversation with me about the
economy, about the banking system - 10-15 minutes, and I left. The next
time I saw him was on May 8, 2009, and he called me and said, ‘Sanusi, I
have searched, I have looked at you, I have asked and I want you to
know that I am going to make you the next governor of the Central Bank’.
“I am saying this because my own
impressions of the late president was of a man who was ready to give me
this job without knowing me, without me lobbying for it, and purely on
the basis of what he thought the country needed. This is my own
impression of the late President Yar‘Adua.
El-Rufai said in page 366 of the book that he
was the one handling almost all the activities which were supposed to be
handled by the vice president as Obasanjo handed them over to him.
“Indeed in the final year of Obasanjo’s
presidency, I was not just running the FCT but involved in an array of
activities - I was required to handle the portfolios of the minister of
commerce and industry (twice) minister of interior, chair of national or
cabinet committees on electric power supply improvement, sale of
federal government houses in Abuja, national ID card, development of a
national mortgage system, public service reforms, review of salaries and
emoluments in the public service, (including the military and the
police) destruction of contraband, and was at various times points the
oversight and liaison with chairmen of the Independent National
Electoral Commission and the National Population Commission.
“In the eyes of many, including some of
my cabinet colleagues, I had by default become a de facto vice
president. The more I sorted out these issues, the more Obasanjo threw
others at me, and it just became too much.
“Being the final year of his presidency,
people did not have to make too big of a leap to conclude that Obasanjo
was preparing me for anointment to succeed him. Obasanjo even sent me
to the Niger Delta to work with James Ibori to find a way to create jobs
in Warri.
“He established a presidential
commission on job creation in Warri and made me the chair of it, so I
ended up having to make three or four trips to Delta State just to meet
with the state government and youth organizations to try replicating the
job creation and entrepreneurship programmes we introduced in Abuja
that spawned many new small businesses and thousands of construction
related jobs.
El-Rufai however said that while people
thought Obasanjo was preparing him for something, the truth really was
that no anointment was being contemplated.
“I knew that I was simply an overworked machine and nothing more because I know my boss very well,” he stated.
He said assignments given to him pitched
him against then vice president Atiku Abubakar and some of his
colleagues in the federal cabinet.
man who was ready to take that risk for the country
and do it in the interest of the system. I felt I should say this
because I owe it as a duty. If he were alive today, he would defend
himself; all the people that are alive - Obasanjo, Jonathan - can talk
for themselves, but for the president who is dead... and we all owe it
to ourselves.”
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