Hi guys under his government. Though he had difficulties to keep this promise on some of his nominees, the nation may not forgive him for missing the target on Malam. He should defy Malam’s opponents just as he did for many others.
Both the security apparatus and the APC owe Malam a debt. His doggedness on power shift to the south and in fighting to neutralize the effect of last minute anti-people’s policy of the Buhari administration that would have cost the APC the Presidency are moral debts that both the President and the party owe Malam; otherwise, both will suffer a trust deficit in the eyes of the public. I have told many—and I may be wrong—that even from a strategic point of view, not having a cerebral and politically hyperactive El-Rufa’i on board would be a grave political miscalculation for the administration.
The security apparatus has no moral locus to abandon Malam either. He stood by it and acted on its reports to literally go on the ethnic cleansing of Shi’ites in his state—his one act that I strongly abhor and wrote against. The “security clearance” should come without his solicitation.
All said, Malam El-Rufa’i will hardly miss anything by not being cleared for a ministerial appointment. If anything, that will only feed his ambition of reducing his status from a Plc to a personal enterprise. However, it is the nation that will lose his personal attributes of courage, competence and result. There are few like him among politicians from his state for the President to substitute with.
The President now has three major contentious issues at hand: removal of fuel subsidy, dollar deregulation and the coup in Niger Republic. He must make El-Rufa’i Plc become the fourth.
* Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde writes from Bauchi
