Uneasy calm in Presidency as Shehu Sani alleges El-Rufai’s plot to remove Buhari

KADUNA Governor Nasir El-Rufai has been accused of “thinking of removing President Muhammadu Buhari.”

According to Kaduna Central Sen. Shehu Sani, the governor is eyeing the presidency instead of concentrating on governing Kaduna.

“It would be counter-productive for the governor to start thinking of evicting Buhari in 2019 to be the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” said Sani in the March edition of The Interview, a question-and-answer monthly.

The former activist has been heckling his party man El-Rufai since he ceded the APC guber primary to the ex-minister in 2014. Not minding the fact they are in the same party, Sani has been playing the opposition in Kaduna more than he makes law in Abuja.

But the senator has always insisted in the media his grump with El-Rufai is not about stepping down for him last year. Sani said the governor has been sidelining him in the scheme of things in the statelike the transition committee membership and appointments.

“He decided to allocate some commissioners to the other senator representing zone 1, and from my zone, he gave it to the person I defeated in the primaries. Even my local government, no appointment, not even a councillor was considered,” Sani told Premium Times last year.

But the senator said that is not all. “The second issue is the way he is running Kaduna State since he took over,” he said, adding that El-Rufai has been ruling Kaduna like an emperor. So he has vowed to battle the governor till 2019.

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And the fight has gone so messy the state chapter of the APC had to suspend Sani for what it considered his anti-party activities.

But many believe the Kaduna governor is truly ambitious. Among the APC governors from the north, El-Rufai is the closest to President Muhammadu Buhari. And the closeness to Aso Rock has made political commentators dub the governor as Nigeria’s “unofficial vice president”.

That apart, El-Rufai is also seen to have been working tacitly to undermine Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who, to many, is the natural successor to the presidency.

There’s no doubting the fact that the 2019 presidential election is causing ripples among the top APC dreamers in the north. And the top contenders among them include Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso, Sokoto Gov. Aminu Tambuwal, Sen. President Bukola Saraki, and El-Rufai.

That the Kaduna governor features among those scheming for the highest office come 2019 is just enough to bother the ruling APCand even Aso Rock. Only that it is not clear yet Buhari, who will be pushing 77 then, actually means he is not sitting tight as he promised.