El-Rufai: We’ve unearthed monumental heist, says Kaduna Assembly

• Sani lampoons ex-gov’s commissioners for criticising report
• el-Rufai’s son digs at Tinubu as father hits successor

Kaduna State House of Assembly has said some political appointees, who briefed newsmen in Abuja, have been making desperate but futile moves to denigrate the House and cover up the alleged fraud perpetrated by the Nasir el-Rufai government, only represented themselves.
 
This was as Senator Shehu Sani has said the former commissioners defending el-Rufai over the alleged pillage of the state’s resources should not be taken seriously.
 
Meanwhile, son of the former governor, Bashir el-Rufai, in a series of tweets, yesterday, aimed not-so-subtle digs at President Bola Tinubu, stating that nobody is too big to be voted out of office, no matter the powers backing them, while his father hits at Governor Uba Sani.
 
The Chair, Fact-Finding Committee and Deputy Speaker of Kaduna Assembly, Henry Magaji, issued a statement insisting that the pro-el-Rufai commissioners failed to address the main issue, which was the systematic and coordinated cornering of state’s resources through phony contracts and outright looting.
 
He said, “The attention of the Kaduna State House of Assembly has been drawn to a press conference addressed by some senior political appointees of the immediate past administration of el-Rufai, who made strenuous efforts to pick holes in the report of the probe panel. They resorted to name-calling and wild allegations on the motivations for the probe.
  
“If they genuinely have the interest of Kaduna State and are truly men and women of integrity, they would have applied themselves to developing the state, instead of participating in the alleged pilfering of its scarce resources.”
 
According to him, the briefing was just a rehash of the vituperations and innuendos heaped on the panel by the former political appointees in their first press briefing.
 
He added, “We dug deep and unearthed the monumental heist carried out in Kaduna in the guise of projects execution. Our findings revealed a litany of poorly executed projects, abandoned projects and projects that exists only in the imagination of executive scammers.”
 
“We have called on anti-corruption agencies to step in and invite indicted persons for questioning. It is the anti-corruption agencies that can either validate or disprove our findings, not individuals who spent their days in public office cornering the common patrimony of Kaduna people and mortgaging the future of its children and grandchildren.”
 
Magaji urged the former political appointees to deploy their energies towards preparing their defence before the anti-corruption agencies and eventually the courts.
KADUNA Assembly is probing the alleged N243 billion fraud by el-Rufai’s administration.
 
According to Sani, no amount of falsehood and disinformation will change the fact that from 2015 to 2023, Kaduna was looted, leaving generations unborn with huge debt burden.
 
The civil rights activist, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th National Assembly, pointed out: “They shamelessly left behind litany of uncompleted projects and contractual liabilities that has suffocated the economy of our state. They pocketed billions of naira for non-existent light rail projects and tied our Internally-Generated Revenue (IGR) to fraudulent bank loans.”
 
Sani posted in his X handle, yesterday: “Kaduna is like a woman raped and the rapist wants honour. Every reasonable resident of Kaduna can clearly see and attest to the properties and wealth amassed by those who claimed to have served the state. 
 
“The spirit and blood of the people they wasted and the livelihoods they destroyed will continue to haunt them. We shall recover every penny of our state’s funds looted by those rodents and their larcenous head.”

IN his X post, el-Rufai’s son said the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) “cannot save anyone” from electoral loss.
 
“I didn’t call names o, but due to their guilt, they already know who is being spoken about. Wallahi, none of you will force anyone to support this utter failure of governance,” he wrote.

MEANWHILE, the former governor has responded to an X post criticising his successor, Uba Sani. 
 
On Tuesday, an X user had posted that Sani “has changed Kaduna completely” since he assumed office, with pictures of dumpsites.
 
Responding to the post, the former governor posted a cryptic message that reads: “From God we all came, and to Him we shall all return.”
 
Sani had accused the el-Rufai administration left huge debt and liabilities, which stymied governance in Kaduna.
 

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