El-Rufai’s wife tackles son over critical comment on Tinubu’s govt

Hadiza Isma-El-Rifai, a wife of former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has tackled her son, Bashir, for attacking the President Bola Tinubu administration.

The junior Mr El-Rufai had criticised the presidency’s rejoinder to a critical comment by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in an address delivered at an American university on the state of the nation.

Mr Obasanjo, in the paper he presented at Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum, Yale University, in the United States recently, described Nigeria under President Tinubu as a failing state.

But the presidency dismissed the comment, saying Mr Obasanjo was not an ideal leader or one to emulate.

Bashir El-Rufai, in a post on his X handle, defended Mr Obasanjo and rebuked the presidential media team over the rejoinder.

“Attacking Obasanjo with the state of the country now has to be a mental illness permeating the whole of the media comms team. Inflation is at 33%”, he wrote on his X handle.

In response to the tweet, his mother, Hadiza Isma, joined multiple respondents against the statement.

“Are you sure you’d be saying this if your father were part of this government(?). (President Bola Tinubu administration)”, Mrs El-Rufai stated.

Are you sure you’d be saying this if your father were part of this government? https://t.co/I1JSdekyPO

— Hadiza Isma El-Rufai (@hadizel) November 19, 2024

She later appeared to clarify her comment in a response to a tweet by The Cable newspaper, saying her comment was mere banter between mother and son.

The online newspaper had reported the exchange between the two members of the El-Rufai family.

Previous criticism by Bashir El-Rufai

Bashir, the outspoken son of the former Kaduna State governor, in July, attacked Mr Tinubu and his father’s successor, Governor Uba Sani, predicting that both will be voted out of office in 2027 for ”non-performance”.

In a series of posts on social media, Bashir condemned the indictment of his father of mismanaging about N423 billion by the state House of Assembly, describing the development as political intimidation.

He alleged that outside forces were teleguiding the Kaduna State government in the probe, asking supporters to be patient as those behind it would not succeed.

Bringing President Tinubu under his fury, the junior El-Rufai said the IMF and World Bank could not save the president, adding that his strategies in Lagos cannot work in Nigeria.

“Nobody is too big to be ‘elected out of office’ by the people. It will happen & wallahi nothing will happen. So forget all these intimidations flying up and down. Let us be patient.

“Even IMF & World Bank no go save una that time. Political strategist una. That one na for Lagos,” Bashir stated.

He added that no one could force him to support a failed government.

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“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 disguised as a useless, dangerous ethnocentric political strategy,” Mr El-Rufai said on X.

President Tinubu lost Kaduna State to the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election, despite the former governor’s efforts.

However, since the Senate dropped him in controversial circumstances after being nominated for ministerial appointment by Mr Tinubu, Mr El-Rufai has kept a distance from the president.