El-Rufai Finally Opens Up On Leaked Memo, Vows To Expose More ills In Buhari’s Govt

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state

Days after his memo written to President Muhammadu Buhari leaked to the media, Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has finally revealed why he authored the controversial memo.

In an interview conducted by Daily Trust, Mallam El-Rufai said that the memo was sent to the president to right some wrongs in his administration.

El-Rufai said he was compelled to write the memo because he felt that people close the president could not tell him the bitter truth he would like to hear.

“First of all, let me say that this is not the first memo that I have written to the president. From the time I began to interact politically with him since 2010, anytime I saw a situation requiring advice or change in direction, I usually went to discuss with him,” he said.

“I always said, ‘I will go and reduce it to writing so you can have a document to reflect upon and decide and guide your action.’

“This is not even the tenth memo I have written to the president. I have probably written more than 20 memos. I did this at various stages – from our days in the Congress for progressive Change (CPC), before the 2011 elections, after the 2011 elections, and during the merger process.

“I have always felt that my duty to him as my political leader is to pick up what he doesn’t hear, because as a lower level person, I get to hear more about what is going on. And if I see things going wrong, I have a duty to go to him and say, ‘This is what I’ve heard, the facts I have established and my advice on the way forward.’

“They are all problem-solving memos, they identify the problems, analyse them and propose solutions. So this is the spirit of all my memoranda to the president from 2010 till date.”

“I wrote this memo because I felt very strongly at that time that many things were not working as planned. I was part of All Progressives Congress (APC) Strategic Planning Committee. I am one of the authors of the manifesto; I was part of the 34 people that signed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) document to register the party. So, I consider the APC as one of my children. I know the dream we had and the very high expectations our people had in Buhari’s government. And I am close enough to the president to know what he is committed to in terms of social justice and progress. I see the people that have been trusted to drive the agenda are not doing it.

“They are focused on other things that what is Buharism. And I am a Buharist. I believe in the man, I gave the last seven years of my life working with him and knowing him. From the time we worked with Obasanjo’s government, Oby Ezekwesil and I would always go and confront him when we see something going wrong. When it required writing, we would write to him. This is how I have been. I feel that the duty of every subordinate is to tell the truth to his superior and the superior can take a decision.

“I saw these things going on and decided that I would have a comprehensive discussion with him. I raised many issues in the memo in the previous discussions with him because every once in a while I go to the president with my list of issues.

“When I visited him in Daura during last sallah in the company of Pastor Tunde Bakare, his running mate in the 2011 presidential election, I shared some of the items on the memo with him, So three of us sat with the president and went through the first draft memo. We looked at it and debated. He gave his views about some aspects of the memo. This was about seven months ago.

“I have done my bit. I have put on the record what I think is not going the right way. It is the president’s call to move the agenda forward. If you look at some aspects of the memo, you would see that he has begun implementing some.

Asked why the memo was leaked to the media, Mallam El-Rufai said that he didn’t know how it became the public property, adding that if had wanted it to be made public he would have done so before now.

He said: “As I said, I have written several memos to the president. This is the first one that has leaked. I can state categorically that I didn’t leak it. If I did, I would say so. I wrote the memo, it’s my memo, I could have made it public if I chose to, but I did not.”