El-Rufai’s Cabinet to Kaduna Govt: You Plucked Outlandish Figures to Portray My Administration as Corrupt

•Urges Uba Sani to explain discrepancies in debt figures

•Accuses some  lawmakers of conflict of interest

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The cabinet of a former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai yesterday again reacted to the probe of the administration by the state House of Assembly, accusing them of plucking figures from thin air to tar his eight-year government.

In the reaction read during a press conference by members of the Kaduna State Executive Council (2015-2023), in Abuja, a copy of which was made available to THISDAY, the former governor urged Governor Uba Sani to explain the discrepancies between the debt figures he admitted during the last days of the el-Rufai’s administration and the one churned out by the lawmakers.

“The variations between these figures, publicly declared by the head of the departing administration, and those cited in the report are for the current administration to explain.

“ On March 30, 2024, at the town hall meeting that was used as the trigger for this public phase of the reputation tarnishing project, the head of the current administration in the state put the debt burden at $587 million, N85 billion naira. On Page 168, the ad-hoc committee put the external debt at $758.14 million, but also lists more than $2 billion in loans it claimed the el-Rufal administration took,”, el-Rufai stated.

 In a “Report of the Ad-hoc Committee on Loans, Financial Transactions, Contractual Liabilities and Other Related Matters of the Government of Kaduna State from May 29, 2015 to May 29, 2023”, the current administration in the state had accused el-Rufai of siphoning over N400 billion during his tenure.

Some of the former Kaduna officials that signed on behalf of the members of the Kaduna State Executive Council (2015 to 2023) were: Former Commissioner, Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Education, Jafaru Sani, as well as a former Commissioner, Ministry of Human Services & Social Development, Hafsat Baba.

Others were: Former Commissioner, Public Works & Infrastructure as well as Planning & Budget Commission,  Thomas Gyang; former Commissioner, Ministry of Finance and Chief of Staff, Bashir Saidu as well as ex-Commissioner, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment, Ibrahim Husaini.

Also listed were: Former Commissioner, Ministry of Justice, Aisha Dikko; former Commissioner, Ministry of Housing & Urban Development, Fausat Ibikunle; former Commissioner, Ministry of Business, Innovation & Technology as well as Ministry of Sports Development, Idris Nyam.

Till date, el-Rufai disclosed that the Kaduna State House of Assembly has not responded to formal requests for the certified true copy of the report it adopted at its sitting on June 5, 2024.

The former administration officials said that el-Rufai was not invited by the ad-hoc committee which made certain claims against him and has approached the Federal High Court for the enforcement of his fundamental rights.

According to them, it is apparent to that the report was riddled with inaccuracies and instances of falsification and misrepresentation of the testimonies provided by invited officials.

“ There is a dissonance between its recommendations and the testimonies the ad-hoc committee heard. It bears restating that its conclusions seem to have been decided beforehand and were insulated from the facts. The report is an attempt to inflict maximum reputational damage on certain selected members of the Kaduna State Executive Council, Class of 2015-2023. 

“The report indulges in the futility of plucking outlandish figures out of thin air in the hope of solidifying impressions of a scandalous and corrupt conduct. The avalanche of figures seems only to have had the effect of mesmerising the legislators who cite one amount here, and then something different on exactly the same figure,” the former el-Rufai government said.

Citing several instances of discrepancies, the ex-government officials stated that quite aside from the ‘comical’ claim that a government siphoned money, nowhere in the report was the trail of the allegedly siphoned N423.1 billion funds shown.

“The report does not show how they arrived at this figure, and how they decided that money had been siphoned, how it was done, from which accounts and to where. They just decreed a figure and declared it!

“This is the ad-hoc committee in action, indulging in voodoo accounting just to concoct a scandal. We note that this same Kaduna State House of Assembly received and accepted the audited accounts of the state for each year from 2015 to 2022, but now wants the public to disregard the formal, legally, and constitutionally recognised public accounts of the state in favour of its wishy-washy, malicious but incompetent and poorly calculated attempt at legislative character assassination,” the document read.

El-Rufai said that a scrutiny of the report easily showed that the ad-hoc committee was inconsistent with the figures it cited as the domestic and foreign loans of the state. 

In a challenging environment, the el-Rufai administration said it did not lament its luck and construe governance as an endless exercise in blaming the past. Rather, it said it brought innovations and governance capacity to Kaduna state.

“We have previously noted that the House of Assembly took no care to avoid bias and conflicts of interest. Some of its members partook in ‘investigating’ government agencies with which they are having or have had business dealings or tax related issues, or in adopting recommendations on the same. Let’s give two examples.

“Hon. Dahiru Yusuf, the Speaker of the Kaduna State House of Assembly, was investigated by the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS) which froze some of his personal accounts for having billions in untaxed and unexplained income.

“He is also involved in a public-private partnership with Kaduna Markets to develop a Neighbourhood Centre over which he has had differences with the management of Kaduna Markets. 

“Despite these obvious conflicts, he presided at the House of Assembly session that adopted the ad-hoc committee’s recommendation that the former chairman of KADIRS and the former Managing Director of Kaduna Markets be referred for further investigation,” the former governor said.

 In addition, he noted that Hon. Mahmud Isma’ila, a member of the ad-hoc committee, who has proved to be very vocal in condemning el-Rufai is also a biological brother of the current governor, Sani.

“We have once again drawn attention to the glaring evidence of the hatchet job that passes for the report and the ad-hoc committee. It oozes malice and patent unfairness and raises the question why a House of Assembly that arranged extensive media coverage of its adoption of the report has refused to provide certified true copies of the same Report more than a month after.

“ It cannot be a reasonable assumption on their part that we will meekly accept this breach of fundamental rights or cower in the face of this premeditated assault on our reputations,” the former governor stated.