El-Rufai Challenges Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, on Tuesday told former President Goodluck Jonathan to take responsibility for presiding over the skewed distribution of ecological funds.

Speaking at a press conference in Kaduna, the Senior Special Assistant to Governor El-Rufai on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, said the issues raised by Mr. El-Rufai were not his personal opinions but the view of the committee he chairs.

Earlier, a National Executive Council, NEC, committee chaired by Mr. El-Rufai had accused Mr. Jonathan of distributing ecological funds to only governors elected on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in 2013.

In his reaction, Mr. Jonathan had accused the Kaduna State governor of lying against him by claiming that only PDP states benefitted from ecological funds, adding that the governor has a penchant for lying.
But Mr. El-Rufai, on Tuesday, said that rather than resort to attacks on his person, the former president should provide a rationale for presiding over the distribution of federal funds in a discriminatory manner.

“Former President Goodluck Jonathan is not a man that can take responsibility for anything,” the Kaduna state governor said.

“In March 2015, not long after making a concession call to President Buhari, he summoned his party and asked its leadership to reject the results of an election whose winner he had congratulated in private.

“That effort at duplicity failed spectacularly and the will of the people prevailed. So, no one should be surprised that he is denying presiding over the skewed distribution of ecological funds. His denial begs the question.

Commenting further, the governor said, “What special circumstances ensured that only states that were controlled by the PDP and its allied parties qualified for N2 billion each? Is it not curious that not only were his allies the only ones who got the funds, but that the various ecological problems in all 17 states required the same N2 billion across the states?

Mr. El-Rufai said that the former president cannot argue with the facts, adding that the payments are in the records of the Ecological Fund.

“He knowingly engaged in discriminatory disbursement of federal funds. The legality of that is open to question, despite the existence of presidential discretion,” he said.

Throwing more lights on the committee’s discovery, the Kaduna State governor said: “The (committee’s) Interim Report detailed how 17 states each received N2 billion direct support from the Ecological Fund in 2013.

“The states are Abia, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Gombe, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Ondo, Plateau, Ebonyi, Delta, Enugu and Taraba.

“19 other states and the FCT did not receive this direct support. Any perusal of this list shows clearly which party controlled them as at 2013. Fifteen of the 17 recipient states had governors from the PDP, while the governors of Ondo and Anambra were from PDP-allied parties.

“As the chairman of the ad-hoc committee, (Mr.) El-Rufai drew the attention of NEC and the public to this skewed pattern of allocating the Ecological Fund.

“Former President Goodluck Jonathan has responded to this disclosure by launching a personal attack on Nasir El-Rufai. He did not make a distinction between a committee of the National Economic Council and the person chairing it.

“While this is unfortunate and calculated to draw the headlines, Dr. Jonathan strained to explain away this strange pattern of fund allocation. But the facts are not deniable. They are in official records, and cannot be erased by slinging mud at people.”

Mr. El-Rufai noted that Mr. Jonathan did not deny that the N2 billion payments were skewed to certain states.

“His mindset in trying to create an equivalence between those payments and federal support for the green wall projects in some of the northern states can be easily seen as a disingenuous argument,” he said.