By Adesina Soyooye
A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has alleged that the National Security Adviser, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, is the mastermind of the attempt by security agents to arrest him at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on Thursday.
El-Rufai, a former Governor of Kaduna State, on return to Nigeria from Cairo, Egypt, where he went for his medicals, had a brush with security operatives which he said attempted to arrest him. He resisted the arrest, insisting on an invitation letter, and with the strong support of a milling crowd, stopped the security operatives from arresting and whisking him away. His International passport was, however, impounded by operatives of the Department of State Services.
Initial reports were that a combination of operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFFC, and those of the DSS was responsible for the botched arrest. But El-Rufai has clarified that.
Speaking when he received former Nigeria’s Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, also a chieftain of the ADC who visited to pay him a solidarity visit on Thursday, El-Rufai deposited his ordeal at the feet of NSA Ribadu.
He told Atiku that it was the NSA who sent the ICPC after him. Following the NSA’s alleged order, he said, the ICPC procured the DSS to help arrest him. He said the EFCC, which had, earlier, invited him while he was out of the country, had nothing to do with his experience at the Abuja Airport.
He told Atiku: “It turned out that it’s the ICPC that procured DSS to abduct me and hand me over to them. The ICPC has never invited me. We just understood that it’s ICPC, not EFCC, that’s responsible for what happened today (Thursday) and the ICPC Chairman is acting on the direct order of Nuhu Ribadu.”
Responding, Atiku, who sympathized with El-Rufai said a strong viable opposition must be built to fight President Tinubu in 2027.
He said: “We must come together and form a very viable opposition because Tinubu is determined to turn Nigeria into a one party system.”
A couple of days before his tango with security operatives at the airport, El-Rufai, while still in Cairo, predicted he could be arrested on return to Nigeria. He had also described the NSA in very unflattering language, dismissing him as “very wicked”, and said he regretted his earlier close relationship with him, and accused Ribadu of ordering the indiscriminate arrest of Nigerians.
El-Rufai was a founding member of the APC before things went awry and he defected to the APC.
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