A Perspective on General Christopher Musa's Remarks on Nasir El Rufai

A Perspective on General Christopher Musa's Remarks on Nasir El Rufai

By: Yunana Shibkau 

The remarks of General Christopher Musa, present Minister of Defence on the erstwhile Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El Rufai, has expectedly, generated an avalanche of reactions from different directions. Some from the quarters of those who suffer from selective amnesia or, willful aversion to words of truth, and creditably from those who stood on fairness and belief in truth as remarked by General Christopher Musa.

Let's begin with a quick background. General Christopher Musa's remarks was made in a television programme in which he accused Malam El Rufai of consciously pursuing a policy of division, discrimination and vendetta while he was Kaduna State governor from 2015 to 2023.

To anyone with a sense of fair and objective judgement relating to his administration of Kaduna State, El Rufai would be adjudged as a woeful failure on the scale of what is expected of a leader in a heterogeneous society of divergent ethnic and religious groups.

For eight long years, between 2015 and 2023, Kaduna State experienced a heightened level of inter-communal violence and insecurity triggered by a virulent reign of banditry on levels hitherto unseen in the state. El Rufai's era witnessed large-scale displacements of people from their ancestral homes, wanton and targeted killings of a people that qualified to be called a genocidal campaign. It was a period of economic ruination such as the destruction of farmlands and the preventions of farmers from gaining access to their farms during the planting and harvest seasons.

Through acts of commission and omission, the administration of Nasir El Rufai was explicitly and tacitly, complicit in the perpetuation of the series of the atrocities against southern Kaduna. This is because of the government's complacency, nonchalance and lackadaisical attitude to intelligence reports of potential or real occurrences of conflicts. Obviously because, the theatre was southern part of the state and, the victims were Christians, non-Hausa-Fulani.

In retrospect, El Rufai's policy of looking the other way in the face of the calamities visited on southern Kaduna, was a contrived ploy to embolden the merchants of death. There were also several policy pronouncements and actions that, explicitly demonstrated government's culpability in the blood chilling crimes against the people in the region.

For instance, in terms of representation and inclusiveness in government, political appointments were skewed against southern Kaduna under Nasir El Rufai. It was glaringly done in a way never seen before. Not even back to the days when present Katsina and Kaduna states were together.

The lack of fairness, equity and justice in political appointments was similarly exhibited in the civil service. The massive purge carried out by El Rufai in the state civil service and among teachers, was not a haphazard exercise. It affected mostly people from the southern part who formed the bulk of the state's workforce. To add to the trauma and pain, the sacked workers were not paid their legitimate disengagement benefits.

The official policy of apartheid suffered by southern Kaduna under Nasir El Rufai was also carried out with impunity in respect of the location of infrastructure and socio-economic facilities. Visibly the region was left out in the galore of construction, renovations of roads and structures of public educational and health institutions.

While, it is a fact that the neglect of southern Kaduna between 2015-2023 was more or less, the continuation of the conscious underdevelopment of the region since 1960, the administration of Nasir El Rufai however, did not only pursue that policy direction but, he vigorously aggravated and took it to a higher level.

A honest and empirical analysis of the crisis must factor in the conflicts between Christianity, the faith of the majority of people in southern Kaduna and the Islamization agenda long held by some sections of the power elite in the North. In this regard, the decades of the travails of the region and its people are no more than persecutions carried out on the basis of faith.

Malam Nasir El Rufai as governor, did not make the slightest attempt to pretend about his deep-seated disdain for the people of southern Kaduna. For example, he never for once visited or showed genuine empathy to victims of violence unleashed by Fulani herdsmen and the bandits.

Perhaps, the peak of El Rufai's utter disregard for the religious, cultural and political sensitivities of the people of southern Kaduna was his decision to run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in his re-election in 2019. It was a rude, rascally deviation from the age-old political tradition of power sharing and balancing to promote sense of belonging, equity and harmony in the heterogeneous and highly combustible state. That brazen act tells it all in a nutshell.

General Christopher Musa, the Honourable Minister of Defence was therefore, merely speaking the Truth by calling a spade without embellishments or garnishments. That is the way of a soldier, a General.

Yes, it is not in dispute that, by his toxic use of power, Nasir El Rufai trampled upon the human rights and dignity of the people of southern Kaduna with reckless abandon. In the process, he stoked embers of mass destruction, hate, disunity and divisions in Kaduna State. 

That’s why today, as accurately pointed out by General Musa, people in southern Kaduna don't feel safe living in the northern part, just as people in the north do not find it comfortable living in the southern section.

By the way, let us ask a few pertinent questions: why is the crises of inter-communal conflicts peculiar to the northern parts of the country? There are multi ethnic and multi religious communities in the South-West, South-South and the South-East, but they don't have the problems of incessant bloody clashes like we have in the North. Why? The answer is not far-fetched.

To better understand the experience of the people of southern Kaduna under Nasir El Rufai and other similar incidents before his tenures, attention must be focused on the wider frameworks of long-held Islamists agenda of Islamization in the minority communities in southern Kaduna, parts of Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, Taraba, Gombe and Bauchi states.

Nasir El Rufai had on several occasions and fora, flaunted and boasted as an unapologetic believer and harbinger of the supremacy agenda. These traits he showed copiously, when he had the opportunity to govern Kaduna State.

Such was it that, when he ultimately left office after eight harrowing years, he bequeathed in southern Kaduna, a legacy of despondency and poverty. To the people, the El Rufai's era was that of the reign of blood, sorrow and tears.

General Christopher Musa was right that the people cannot be happy or forget. 

According to the old adage and karmic law: you reap what you sow. Yes, if you sow the wind, you should expect to harvest the whirlwind aplenty.

Some of the northern elites who planted the seeds of discord and mayhem in the name of pursuing religious and ethnic supremacy agendas, are inadvertently today, reaping the results of their "labour" by way of virulent Islamist insurgencies such as the Boko Haram, ISWAP, and the Lakurawa.

We are in the habits of pushing the blame by looking for scapegoats. But it is irrefutable that, NOT Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan or Bola Ahmed Tinubu that should be held responsible for the emergence of banditry, kidnappings for ransom or, the fratricidal wars between herdsmen and farmers.

Similarly, we cannot push the blame elsewhere, when looking for the root causative factors of the unceasing carnage of Fulani invasions of indigenous ethnic peoples in the Middle-Belt. The blame lies squarely on some of the northern elites with the weird, anachronistic logic of seeing progress, stability and prosperity in creating divisions along the primordial fault lines of faith and ethnicity.

Looking back into history, it is lamentable that the North has sadly lost its glorious golden age when the sense of Unity and Inclusion, allowed for the emergence of great people in the casts of Dr Russell Barau Dikko, the first medical Doctor of the region and the brain behind the formation of the Northern People’s Congress, NPC;  Professor Ishaya Audu, the first indigenous Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University-all who are Hausa Fulani Christians with a positive and pioneering spirit.

Or, General Yakubu Gowon, the man who led the nation's historic war of Unity, and Generals Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, Domkat Bali and Air Vice Marshall John Isa Doko, among several others heroes, who as young officers, put their lives on the line to make the North a formidable, united and prosperous region. Once upon a time.

The latter-day political elite who claims to be following in the footsteps of the great Sir Ahmadu Bello. They are either poor imitators or opportunists. The Sardaunan Sakkwato lived, worked and related well with people who were not of the same faith as his. A grandson of Usman Dan Fodio, he did NOT hoist Islamization as a cardinal article of governance, even though, he was conscious of the region's plurality.

Certain people, either out of genuine ignorance or, outright mischief, have insinuated religious and ethnic undertones to the General Christopher Musa's remarks on Nasir El Rufai's raw ordeal suffered by the people of southern Kaduna while he was governor. That is grossly incorrect. A typical world-class professional soldier, a decorated war-tested veteran of his caliber cannot descend to the pedestrian level of a religious or ethnic chauvinist.

In addition to his urbane and patriotic exposures in the nation's Army, General Christopher Musa, was born and brought up in Sokoto and is therefore, a man with an intricate mix of cultural and social background that makes him to tower high above mundane bigotry of any sorts.

General Christopher Musa was simply pained. His remarks on Nasir El Rufai were a candid, heroic call on the elites of the North to buckle up and come alive to the existential challenge of salvaging the region and the people from going further down the abyss. Allah Ya kyauta, Ya gyara mana, ameen.

*Engineer Yunana Shibkau, a former Special Assistant on Inter-Religious Affairs to former Governor Sani Yarima Bakura, is a Hausa-Fulani Christian from Gora in Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State.

Email;yunanashibkau2@yahoo.com