Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday disagreed with Kaduna State
Governor, Nasir El-Rufai over how the Ecological fund was utilized under
his administration.
El-Rufai on Thursday after the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting in
Abuja had claimed that Jonathan gave N2 billion each from the Ecological
fund to PDP states without any emergency or ecological needs.
But Jonathan on Friday replied that El-Rufai has an incurable knack for
lying, which he said has been proven by El-Rufai’s boss, former President
Olusegun Obasanjo.
Jonathan, in a statement by his Media Adviser Ikechukwu Eze, said that
Obasanjo had described El-Rufai in his book-My Watch Volume 2 as follows:
“Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological. Why does
he do it? He is brilliant and smart. I grant him that also. Very
early in my interaction with him, I appreciated his talent and brilliance.
At the same time, I recognised his weaknesses; the worst being his
inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but
only to Nasir el-Rufai. He barefacedly lied which he did to me against his
colleagues and so-called friends. I have heard of how he ruthlessly
savaged the reputation of his uncle, a man who was like, in the African
setting, his foster father. I shuddered when I heard the story of what he
did to his half-brother in the Air Force who is senior to him in age.”
With such a description, the statement said Jonathan was not surprised at
El-Rufai’s recent comments after the just concluded National Economic
Council meeting where he accused former President Jonathan of only sharing
the National Ecological Fund to PDP States.
El-Rufai had said “What President Goodluck Jonathan did was to take N2bn
each from the
Ecological Fund and gave to some PDP states. Any PDP state that was not
his friend, like Kano and Kwara, didn’t get.”
Jonathan’s spokesman said “It is so easy to expose Malam Nasir El-Rufai as
a liar being that
Akwa-Ibom, a PDP state governed by the then Chairman of the PDP Governors
Forum and a close confidante and major supporter of the then President,
Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, did not get the monies alluded to by Malam
El-Rufai from the Ecological Fund as did multiple other PDP states
including Ekiti state, a state governed by a thoroughbred patriot and
Jonathan supporter, Ayo Fayose.
“Also, it is false that non-PDP states did not get monies from the fund.
Nemesis catches up faster with liars than any other agent of evil.
El-Rufai was probably led by the gods against his own sinister plot to
confess in another breathe that States under non-PDP parties like APGA and
Labour party also benefitted.
“The fact remains that the Ecological Fund is a specialized fund with
certain constitutional requirements which must be met before a state can
access the funds. Every state benefitted from the fund under President
Jonathan who bent over backwards to accommodate states that
had difficulty meeting the criteria for accessing the fund.
“El-Rufai’s sinister narrative was intentionally silent on the over N10
billion specially deployed to fund the Great Green Wall (GGW) project in
some northern states, in view of the need to work with the rest of Africa
on the African initiative to check desert encroachment in the
Sahelian states. These states included Zamfara, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto,
Katsina and Adamawa.
“Others are Yobe, Borno and Kano which belong to Mallam El-Rufai’s class
of ‘non-friendly’ states that he alleged never benefitted from any
discretionary fund.
“Similar principle applies to the conditions for accessing the Universal
basic Education fund where some states have not had access to what is due
them, because they are yet to fulfill the mandatory criteria for
allocation. Would it then be right in the name of El-Rufai’s position on
equity to blame the failure of those states to access their UBEC funds on
Jonathan?
He said that it is really sad that judicious presidential interventions to
tackle emergencies and other pressing national needs are being
interrogated in a rather facile manner, by those who never got tired of
playing dirty politics.
He urged Nigerians to recall that it was not the first time that El-Rufai
has vented his known passion for lying against the former President.
“The public will recall that in October 2015 he falsely alleged that
former President Jonathan spent a whopping N64 billion on Independence Day
celebrations, during his tenure when in fact only N333 million was spent.
“Nigerians may also recall that this same El-Rufai falsely accused former
President Jonathan and former CAN President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor of
founding and funding Boko Haram to the tune of N50 billion.
“We can only wonder what new false accusation El-Rufai may come up with
tomorrow, as with him it is a case of one day, one lie!
“We therefore urge Nigerians to “be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to
wrath” whenever this notorious liar opens his mouth,” he stated.