Why El-Rufai, Sani rift will linger
From Andrew Agbese, Kaduna
The suspension of Senator Shehu Sani from the All Progressives Congress (APC), according to pundits, was meant to achieve three things.
Given his constant attack on the government of the day at both the state and federal levels, the suspension, pundits say was meant to discipline the senator and put him back in line, remind him that he is not above the party and can be sanctioned to put him out of circulation for some time.
But if the actions of the senator within the period he was under suspension for an initial 11–months are anything to go by, then it would seem that the party and the leader of the party in the state, Governor Nasir El-Rufai, have succeeded in achieving what they wanted.
Within the 11–month period, the party successfully locked out the senator from its affairs and continued its activities without the input of the senator who was used to raising objection over how the party was run without key officers.
The leadership of the party by the suspension also succeeded in checking dissenting voices from the party as those not with the governor regrouped under a different platform.
Political adviser to Senator Sani, Suleiman Ahmad, said within the period, the party in the state did not involve the senator in anything it was doing while party members were prevented from giving him any information about the party and that any party member seen with him were labelled and dealt with.
“This was done to the extent that the exco of the party in Kaduna was said not to exist simply because it identified with Senator Sani,” he said, adding that the various pronouncements against the senator were also intended to give the senator a bad name.
Daily Trust on Sunday gathered that the effect of the suspension was mainly within the state as the senator was attending meetings and participating in the affairs of the party once outside the state.
Ahmad explained that this is because both the North-West zone of the party and the national secretariat did not recognize the suspension.
“They faulted the process and did not recognize the purported suspension,” he stated.
But the APC in Tudun Wada Ward 6 which initiated the action seem not bothered and on the day the 11–month suspension was to expire, it extended the suspension order indefinitely, saying the senator did not show remorse as he had failed to apologise to the party.
Their action seemed all too predictable as the faction of the party in the same ward had earlier raised an alarm that there was a plan by Uba Sani, one of the aides to the governor, to have him expelled from the party.
Since the action, not a few are convinced that the party in the state is only a tool as the real battle is between the Kaduna State governor, his aides and the senator.
In the run up to the 2015 elections, Senator Sani and Governor El-Rufai had joined forces to fight the PDP in the state and succeeded in clinching most of the elective positions for the APC.
But the romance between the two was short-lived as hardly had the APC government settled down than a sharp division occurred between the two.
Sani, who believed his position as a senator confers on him the right to party leadership in the state said he felt slighted when El-Rufai started running the state without the slightest regard to some of them who he said worked for the party.
The situation worsened when El-Rufai appointed members of his cabinet as well as members of the interim management committees for local governments without consulting them.
Senator Sani and others party stalwarts like Hakeem Baba Ahmed and others then moved against the governor, demanding that since the bulk of the interim management committee chairmen were drawn from the exco of the party then they should have a say on who fills what slot in the exco.
But as the governor ignored them, they formed what became known as the APC Akida and threatened to constitute a parallel structure of the party at all levels in the state.
While the other members of the group voiced their dissent only occasionally, Sani remained resolute and did not pretend whenever the issue was about El-Rufai or the state government.
He lashed out and criticized actions of the state government and aligned with persons or groups that were aggrieved with the state government.
The state government which has taken a position to ignore him and not reply any of his criticisms, however, used other means to get at him.
The exco of Tudun wada Ward 6, which Sani belongs to The recent concern is that the matter is taking a dangerous dimension with the resort to violence by supporters of the two sides. Supporters of Senator Sani were said to have clashed with some El-Rufai supporters last week and a day later thugs raided the office of the senator and disrupted a meeting of his supporters was successfully divided into two with one part siding with the state government and the other with the senator.
But whatever action the side that was against Sani took was the one the state government supported and recognized and in no time found no qualms endorsing the suspension of Sani from the party as well as affirming the recent indefinite suspension.
Supporters of the senator say much as El-Rufai is an issue in the fray, his adviser, Uba Sani, is the one fuelling the crisis in order to exert maximum damage on Shehu Sani’s political base.
Uba Sani hails from the same senatorial zone as the senator and the supporters of Shehu Sani believe he is sustaining the crisis in order for the senator to lose out in the race for 2019, so that he will replace him as the senatorial candidate of the APC in the next elections.
Said Shehu Sani: “El-Rufai gets his political advice from an adviser who serves as his apprentice, who has never won an election. El-Rufai has become a hostage of an “adviser” who continuously extort money from the government in the name of either recalling or suspending Shehu. A project that makes no impact than continuously rubbishing the governor.”
Uba Sani, in a reaction asked Shehu Sani to stop what he called his political tantrums and grow up.
“It has become imperative to set the record straight. Everyone knows that it is Shehu Sani that has spent 18 months attacking the governor personally and opposing every government policy. The government has ignored his tantrums, while the party has acted to uphold discipline. Shehu Sani should keep the government out of his woes.
“We are beneficiaries of democracy and we champion an open society. We respect democratic values and will never resort to unconstitutional means of settling differences. He should be careful not to make wild and unsubstantiated claims,” he said.
Those close to El-Rufai on the other hand believe that Shehu Sani is eyeing the seat of the governor and is doing what he is doing to cast the governor in bad light so that he can run against him in 2019, but Ahmad denied this saying the senator was yet to declare his political interest for 2019.
The recent concern is that the matter is taking a dangerous dimension with the resort to violence by supporters of the two sides.
Supporters of Senator Sani were said to have clashed with some El-Rufai supporters last week and a day later thugs raided the office of the senator and disrupted a meeting of his supporters.
The senator blamed El-Rufai for the attacks, saying he had information that thugs were recruited and paid by political appointees of Governor El-Rufai.
“We have the names of the political appointees and we have the names of those they are funding. Right now their details are with the DSS and the police for investigation,” he stated.
The Kaduna State chapter of the APC on its part defended El-Rufai while describing the senator as uncouth.
The acting publicity secretary of the party, Salisu Tanko Wusono, said the senator should not be taken seriously on his comments.
“Shehu Sani’s outburst is a confirmation that he has no sense of shame. He has since lost focus and why he was elected to the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by the good people of Kaduna Central under the banner of the APC,” he said.
The tiff, our correspondent observed, has lingered not because other organs of the party have not tried to intervene.
The North-West leadership of the party tried to mediate in the fray, but its efforts came crashing when one side accused it of bias. Efforts by some officials of the party at the national level also suffered a similar fate.
As long as both parties remain suspicious of one another, settling the rift will be a hard nut to crack even if the party at the national level decides to intervene.