President Goodluck Jonathan on Sunday urged Nigerians to beware of former FCT Minister and Deputy National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Malam Nasir el-Rufai who he described as "a double minded and unstable man in all his ways."
The former minister was receiving this bashing for stating in an interview published in the Saturday Sun of September 14, 2013 that nothing could make President Jonathan succeed because he was a grossly incompetent president who hardly listen ed or understood issues.
But in a statement issued in Abuja by his special assistant (New Media), Mr Reno Omokri, the president urged the public not to be misled by the machinations of el-Rufai, "a man who is in dire need of prayers and perhaps psychological assistance.".
He recalled that contrary to his position in the interview, el-Rufai had at a meeting with Ambassador John Campbell in April of 2007, said that Jonathan, the then vice-presidential nominee of the People's Democratic Party, PDP, "is clean and honest."
Omokori added that el-Rufai had told the ambassador that Jonathan was the only candidate that met Obasanjo’s guidelines- honesty and Ijaw.”
He said unknown to el-Rufai, the ambassador kept a record of their conversation which was now a public record in America.
Omokori said, "Beyond that, Nasir el-Rufai, who had gone into voluntary exile under the presidency of Malam Umaru Musa Yar'Adua after he was accused of corruption and abuse of office while he was minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), felt safe enough to return to Nigeria as soon as President Jonathan ascended to power.
Omokri recalled that when el-Rufai returned to Nigeria in 2010, he visited President Jonathan at the presidential villa on May 11, 2010, and was the first major political figure to call on him to contest for the 2011 presidential election.
He noted that in the double-speak nature of el-rufai, he showered encomiums on Gen. Muhammadu Buhari in the latest interview contrary to a damning conclusion on the General in 2010.
"I think that where Nigeria is today, it is only someone like Buhari, with the experience of having run the country before, and having run it along certain principles of discipline, integrity and accountability, that Nigeria needs," he stated.
Recalling that the same el-Rufai had, however, in October 6, 2010, said Buhari was not a suitable person to rule the country, Omokori said, "Malam el-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded.
"His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known. In 1984, Buhari allowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new. Against all canons of legal decency, he used retroactive laws to execute three young men for drug-peddling after they were convicted by a military tribunal and not regular courts of law.
"Buhari was so high-handed that he gave himself and his officials immunity even from truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4, against which truth was no defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation showed the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history.
"The story of counter-trade and import licensing, the cornerstone of Buhari’s stone-age economic strategy and those whose interests it served, is a tale for another day."
Omokri said he wondered how el-Rufai could go from warning the nation about Buhari as a man unfit to rule Nigeria and one who is perpetually unelectable because of his parochial nature, to go back to say that it was the same man that could best lead the nation.
The statement issued on Sunday further noted, "It is obvious to all that there is more than one personality in possession of the mind and soul of this man called Nasir el-Rufai. Can any sane person trust the words of a man who is so unstable? Today, el-Rufai, perhaps banking on what he thinks is the short memory of Nigerians, is attempting to rewrite history. But it is such a difficult task to paint the truth with a lie.
"Nasir el-Rufai wanted something from the President which was why he visited him at the presidential villa to heap unsolicited praise on the president in 2010. When he did not get what he wanted, he became bitter and since the days of yore when the fox that could not get the grapes tagged them 'sour grapes' to mask its frustration, it has always been the habit of persons who cannot compete on the basis of ideas to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
"Thus, el-Rufai, having run out of ideas, has tagged this administration as 'incompetent," he said
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