The Chairman of Kaduna State Christian Association of Nigeria, Reverend Joseph Hayab, has said the state’s immediate past governor, Nasir El-Rufai, is unfit to hold public office .
The CAN chairman was reacting to a viral video on social media where El-Rufai was alleged to have said that the Muslim-Muslim ticket in the Kaduna governorship election would be sustained beyond 20 years in the state.
In the video, the former governor, who spoke in Hausa, also claimed that Muslim domination was being replicated at the national level.
The ex-governor’s also said the Muslim/Muslim ticket and the victory of President Bola Tinubu silenced his critics and CAN
But reacting to El-Rufai’s comment while featuring on Arise TV’s Morning Show on Wednesday, Hayab said the ex governor’s remarks were a ploy and divisive tendency aimed to further his (El-Rufai’s) alleged presidential ambition.
He implored Nigerians to ignore El-Rufai as he was just seeking relevance and playing to the gallery to rile up unsuspecting Nigerians.
He said, “You know, since he (El-Rufai) is up to something, he is playing a game and what he would do is to confuse people and set up Christians against Muslims; set up Christians against the present government, and then he would stand to benefit from it tomorrow. Unfortunately, I will say to him, he has failed from the onset.
“With this, he has actually proved to Nigerians that he is not in the first place fit to be a leader and I think that is one of the problems in Nigeria. We give people power without testing their emotional stability whether they are mentally alright to lead.”
When asked to give an official response to El-Rufai’s statement, Hayab said, “Our simple response is that ignores the madman. Ignore the man who is calling for attention and ignore the man who is up to a gimmick and ignore the man who is up to an agenda, don’t even take him seriously.
“If his Muslim/Muslim ticket has actually succeeded, we wouldn’t have had the killings, the division, and the problems we have in Kaduna. So, there was not even success to record this in his administration.
“El-Rufai is just trying to play games and we don’t even want to glorify his game, we simply see him as someone whose era, influence, and power are over but he wants to still be relevant and he wants to bring up something that will give him relevance because he knows that there are so many ignorant people around who may think that he is defending faith but I can tell you so many Imams will remind him how he demolished their mosque; how he maltreated them and never respected them as people of faith, so he is just playing politics and trying to take advantage of the situation.