“A drowning politician trying to drag Ribadu down” – Reno Omokri blasts El-Rufai again

Reno Omokri, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has accused former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, of engaging in a desperate political maneuver to drag Malam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser, down with him.

In a statement on social media, Omokri criticized El-Rufai for his attempts to tarnish Ribadu’s reputation by manipulating a 2006 statement made by the former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) chairman.

According to Omokri, El-Rufai is using this tactic to shift focus from his own declining political fortunes.

Omokri explained that the allegations against Ribadu, which El-Rufai tried to sensationalize with a 2006 headline, were nothing more than a misunderstanding of a statement that was general in nature.

Ribadu, Omokri pointed out, never specifically accused anyone, including Bola Tinubu, of corruption.

His words: “Malam Nasir el-Rufai is frustrated. He lost out in Kaduna, where the Governor has wisely refused to be his Man Friday, and he lost out in becoming a minister after Kaduna residents raised several petitions against him for paying killer herdsmen, who perpetrated the Southern Kaduna Genocide, which rather unsurprisingly stopped as soon as Nasir left office.

“In his bitterness, he has started drowning politically, and he wants to take Malam Nuhu Ribadu, perhaps the most honest Nigerian who ever lived, a man who rejected the largest bribe in Nigeria’s history.

“If you look at the so-called evidence he displayed against Malam Ribadu, in the form of a sensational headline from 2006, it does not invalidate what Malam Ribadu said.

“The then Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did not say that then-Governor Bola Tinubu was corrupt, had been investigated, found guilty, or had been indicted.

“He made a general statement about ALL serving Governors at that time, without excluding anyone. Malam Ribadu said that based on the general feeling at that time, they were lucky not to be in the same position as Governors Dariye and Alamieyeseigha.

“He did not say they had been investigated and found to be corrupt. He was speaking about the general perception about those Governors. Perception, as Nasir el-Rufai knows, is not reality,” Omokri said.

Omokri stated that El-Rufai’s attempt to use Ribadu as a political pawn is an example of his pattern of shifting allegiances and attempting to discredit others to preserve his own position.

He concluded by saying that El-Rufai’s attacks on Ribadu are a classic case of projection, where a politician with low moral standards tries to bring down those with higher ethical grounds.