Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai and Senator representing Kaduna Central at the Senate, Shehu Sani, are locked in Twitter war.
Sani engaged el-Rufai in a social media quarrel as he tweeted a response to an earlier angry tweet by el-Rufai at ex-Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, who is the vice-presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in the 2019 presidential election.
Trouble started when el-Rufai tweeted at Obi, saying, Peter Obi is a tribal bigot.
He was widely quoted on national television that the SSS was right to detain me for 48 hours in an hotel in 2014 on the grounds that ”El-Rufai has no business being in Anambra State as it is not Katsina State”! I sued the SSS and awarded N4m damages. https://t.co/1BIG9WJpAJ
El-Rufai’s tweet was accompanied by an earlier tweet by the Coalition of Buhari-Osibanjo (sic) Movement, which had also tweeted in response to a publication in a national daily (not The PUNCH) entitled, ‘Peter Obi, Ghost Of The Past And Reality Of Today.’
The Coalition, with twitter handle @Cobom2019, had responded to the said write-up on Peter Obi by tweeting: “In a swift moment of needless impulse, Peter Obi bundled some northerners, mostly those who engaged in menial jobs for survival & marched them in trailer load back to their base. To him, these guys had no business being in Anambra State.”
A few hours later, Shehu Sani tweeted an obvious response to el-Rufai:
The two tweets are currently receiving retweets and responses on Twitter.
It may be recalled that Sani defeated el-Rufai’s candidate, Gen. Sani Saleh, at the APC primary that led to Sani’s election as senator in the 2015 election.
To show the deep divide between the two politicians, el-Rufai had claimed in several media interviews that the problem between him and Sani became complicated when he turned down an alleged list of commissioners suggested to him by Sani after he became governor.
El-Rufai claimed in media interviews that he rejected Sani’s commissioner nominees because they were not qualified to be commissioners on account of their “lack of necessary academic competence and capacity to function as commissioners.”
On his part, Senator Sani became unsparing in his criticisms of Governor el-Rufai.
At the peak of their imbroglio, Sani, in a letter dated October 19 and addressed to the chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, he announced his decision to leave the party, even though he did not give reasons for his action.
The letter read, ” I present to you highest compliments and wish by this communication to formally offer to you my resignation from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“I had joined the APC and remained with it against all odds with the belief that it will constitute a veritable platform for the realization of those democratic ideals which I hold very dear, that honour and integrity will be the ultimate ethos of the party and, most importantly, that internal party democracy will always be the norm. However, only posterity can affirm the extent to which the APC has committed to and reflected these values.
“As I exit the APC at this point in time, I wish to formally thank the party for availing me the platform upon which I am currently serving this country in the honoured capacity of Senator of the Federal Republic.
“I wish the party well in all her future endeavours and ask, Sir, that you please accept the assurance of my highest considerations.”
The National Secretariat of the APC said it learnt about Sani’s alleged defection from the media.
Before the events leading to Sani’s resignation, the APC leadership had insisted on an automatic ticket for him to contest the National Assembly election in 2019, but an ally of el-Rufai, Uba Sani, released a statement saying that he and some other aspirants had also been cleared by the APC headquarters to contest alongside Sani for the senatorial ticket.
Sani lost the APC ticket for Kaduna Central Senatorial District after the primaries conducted by delegates from the zone, in which he polled only 15 votes.
Returning Officer, Prof. Eddie Floyd-Igbo, declared Uba Sani, a Special Adviser to Governor Nasir el-Rufa’i, the winner with 2,088 votes; while his closest rival, Usman Ibrahim-Sardauna, secured only 129 votes.
Sani hopes to return to the Senate on the platform of the Peoples Redemption Party, which he joined after quitting the APC.
The Friday Twitter brickbats were the latest between the two Kaduna politicians.
