El-Rufai Says Jonathan is guilty of Ethnic & Religious Politics

Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressive Congress, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of playing ethnic and religious politics to divert the attention of Nigerians from the bad governance going on in the country.

The former Minister who spoke on a Liberty radio guest of the week programme monitored in Kaduna on Saturday also accused the president of lacking the capacity to call to order all those beating the war drums across the country.

el-Rurai noted that having gone through one civil war, the country may not survive another war.

He said that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were afraid of the person of former Head of State, General Mohammadu Buhari and therefore will do everything humanly possible to destroy him and brand him an ethnic and religious bigot.

”There are many agents confronting the Nigerian nation. What is very worrying is the kind of rhetoric that is going on in this country, a lot of which are being sanctioned by the government. For example, whenever Asari Dokubo speaks, just know that a week earlier, he had been called to the villa and given some money and whenever EK Clerk speak, you know it was arranged.

“How can a small ethnic group like the Ijaws threaten the rest of us? We have 170 million; I don’t know how many of that population makes up the Ijaw nation, but I don’t think they are more than 5 million.

“How can 5 million people threaten us saying unless their son becomes president, there will be no Nigeria? Who are they to do that? The government keeps quit when somebody says that. Of course, the expected reaction is that you have people from the north also threatening similar thing.
“What type of a country do we have where there is no one to call people to order? It is sad. Again, it is this political strategy of Jonathan to always use ethnicity and religion whenever there is a problem.

“Whenever there is a big issue about Excess Crude account or subsidy issue, they bring this issue of ethnicity and religion. But I have not lost hope because I know that Nigerians can see through their pranks and their game and will vote them out in the next election. The challenge for the next president is to build trust among the various ethnic groups so that Nigeria can walk towards one direction.

“This country has gone through one civil war; I don’t know of any country that can survive two civil wars and those that are stealing crude oil; buying and stockpiling arms should know it is not the number of arms you have that decides who wins a war. Otherwise, the USA would have won in Iraq, but they couldn’t and at the end they had to leave the Iraqi to solve their problems.

“So, they should think very deeply about what they are doing and learn from history. I know that Nigeria will survive these bad and incompetent leaders who steal during the day and drink and womanise at night instead of working for the Nigerian people, ” el-Rufai stated.