FORMER Sokoto state governor and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa has stated that Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasiru ElRufai is uncouth.
According to Bafarawa, who was responding to an interview El-Rufa’i granted the Hausa Service of the BBC monitored by News Point Nigeria, in which he described northern elders as ‘mere paperweights’ who cannot swing votes in anyone’s favor, the Kaduna state Governor, is a Lilliputian with warped reasoning.
48 hours earlier El.Rufa’i had alleged that there were certain persons or ‘elements’ in the Presidential Villa working against Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate.
Bafarawa, who is also a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemned in strongest term the utterance of Elrufai, who degraded the status of northern elders by declaring that the 19 governors of the Northern States are the real elders of the North.
“It’s unbecoming and lack of decorum for anybody to say such a thing about the northern elders. We have honourable and respectable elders in the north, who care about the region and Nigeria as a whole.
“Age has nothing to do with maturity and honour like Elrufai has clearly shown. At 63, he is still bragging about winning elections. We won elections long before he became a politician and we don’t come here to say things disrespectfully.
“The north is bigger than one man and his ambition, and anybody who rubbishes the north, will bear the consequences. We have good and honourable elders and we are proud of them.
“If ElRufai’s definition of northern elders is correct, then there won’t be any reason for this response. But I want to assure him that we will surprise the APC. The north and Nigeria belongs to all of us,” Bafarawa added.
The PDP Chieftain then asserted that, the Kaduna governors knows that the north will not vote for APC in the forthcoming elections, yet he chose to mislead the APC presidental candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, by assuring him of victory.
