Bukola Saraki, former senate president, has described recent
comments by Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna, about restructuring as “cheap
lies”.
While speaking in an interview on Arise Television on
Wednesday, el-Rufai accused Saraki of frustrating the constitutional amendment
agenda of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to restructure the country when
he was senate president.
Saraki was the senate president between 2015 and 2019.
But reacting through Yusuf Olaniyonu, his media aide, Saraki
described el-Rufai’s comments as “cheap lies”.
Olaniyonu said the Kaduna governor is “fond of making
excuses and trading blames to explain his failure and that of his party”.
He said it’s been years since Saraki left office and “within
the period el-Rufai and his party have the Senate President they want and the
type of Senate they want, yet they have not done anything to restructure
Nigeria”.
Olaniyonu asked el-Rufai to “tell Nigerians if Saraki is
also the one that is responsible for the high level of insecurity which has
escalated from just the north-east to a menace that has now engulfed the whole
of Nigeria under the APC administration”.
“We need him to tell Nigerians if the former Senate
President is responsible for the collapsing state of the economy, spiralling
inflation, huge cost of living, extremely low standard of living across the
country, endemic poverty in the land, the foreign exchange rate that has moved
from N200 in exchange for a dollar to N740 to a dollar, the high level of youth
unemployment, the high rate of oil theft, the alarming rate of borrowing by the
government, high rate of disunity among the component units that make up the
country and other ills bedevilling the country under the APC administration,”
he said.
“El-Rufai claimed he and his party prepared a report on
restructuring and engaged with the National Assembly leadership to amend the
constitution in 2018 when as of February 2016, more than two years earlier, the
8th National Assembly had commenced the constitution amendment process by
setting up committees in both chambers. Members of the committees traversed the
entire country and came up with reports and draft bills.
“By 2018 as El Rufai mentioned, President Muhammadu Buhari
had commenced assent to constitutional amendment bills. Out of the 32
Constitution Bills considered by the National Assembly, 24 secured the required
number of votes on the floors of both chambers. Also, when the 24 were sent to
the state Houses of Assembly, only 12 bills got the required votes.
“This same El-Rufai was one of the governors that frustrated
the passage of most of the bills by state Houses of Assembly. Eventually, the
President assented to five of the 12 Bills submitted to him in 2018 and refused
to sign seven others.
“Even then, it will be interesting to ask the Kaduna State
Governor how his state has implemented important restructuring Bills passed by
Eighth National Assembly headed by Saraki that have been signed into law like
the Financial Autonomy for State Legislature and Judiciary Act.
“If the APC was elected into power in 2015 and El Rufai and
his cohorts were talking about amending the constitution to implement restructuring
three years later when the government had less than a year to the end of its
tenure, the restructuring agenda must be an after-thought or a less important
one on the hierarchy of issues on the APC’s plate.”
Olaniyonu added that el-Rufai has “now become the
spokesperson of a failing presidential campaign as he struts from one
television station to the other, making vile threats, throwing abuses, and
spewing lies. The day of reckoning will soon be here. Nigerians will surely not
reward failure or buy cheap lies”.
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