A former Kaduna State Senator, Shehu Sani, has said that Governor El-Rufai doesn’t like him, as he sees him as a threat.
Sani made the statement in an exclusive interview with the The Quest Times on a Twitter Space on Wednesday, July 27, 2022.
Recall that Sani and El-Rufai were both members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with both winning their senatorial and gubernatorial elections respectively in 2015.
But the honeymoon didn’t last as the duo fell out, with Sani losing his bid to secure a return ticket to the Senate on the platform of the APC, going on to dump the ruling party for the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), where he lost the race for the Kaduna Central senatorial seat in the 2019 elections.
Speaking on his relationship with El-Rufai, Sani accused the Kaduna State governor of orchestrating his exit from the APC due to criticism of his government’s policies.
He said, “We are all from Kaduna State, he is from Zaria, and I’m from Kaduna City itself, and we contested for positions in Kaduna in 2015. He became the governor, and I became a senator.
“So I knew very well that even in 2015, that he doesn’t like me, but the fact that he was not sure whether he will be governor or not, and he has a very limited political experience. He has been living most of his life in Abuja, we are the ones who are living in Kaduna, so he doesn’t know anything about politics.
“He was simply brought in by the likes of Sen Suleiman Hunkuyi and then he became a governor. It is impossible for him in 2015 to have stopped me in our own terrain.
“We started having our differences on the way in which he unfurled his governance system, which I believe was inflicting hardship and suffering on our people. All anti-people policies.
ALSO READ: 2023: It’s time to say goodbye to APC — Shehu Sani
“So I couldn’t resist by telling him this was not what we told people we were going to do in terms of reform that has no human face. So we started with that, we disagreed and then we had four years of a battle with him.
“At the end of the day, as a governor with executive power and resources, he was able to work out my exit from the seat because he sees me as a threat to him.
“And then I told him that this is a battle, and it’s a war, which you know very well it’s because you hold executive position. If you don’t have the executive position, If I and you are on the floor in Kaduna, you can’t do anything. That is the fact of the matter
“But having said that, that is history now, so he won his second term, then I couldn’t go back to the Senate and that was it.
“And I told them that if the people of Kaduna voted for him, well, they should all be ready to reap the the fruit of their own labour, and you can see the situation which the state has turned into now. People have been killed everyday, and have been kidnapped, and the state also has become a haven for bandits and terrorists.
“So it’s a very sad situation for my state, but I believe that things will be better by the time a new government takes over in 2023.”