Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has filed a libel suit ay the State High Court, Kaduna, against Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna Central in the National Assembly, and Austyn Ogannah, Publisher of THEWILL and President of the Online Publishers Association of Nigeria (OPAN), over a story published in May 2016. The story was derived from a press statement by the Senator.
El-Rufai filed the suit at the Kaduna State High Court, Kaduna, in February 2018, seeking an Interlocutory Injunction restraining the defendants from further publishing similar ‘defamatory’ statements against him.
The governor demanded to be granted the sum of N500 million as damages as well as a written apology to be published in the THEWILL.
Senator Shehu had, in the statement issued by his Special Adviser on Politics and Ideology, Ahmed Suleiman, indicated that El-Rufai still has interest in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and will soon return to the party. He expressed that the Governor will eventually betray President Muhammadu Buhari the same way he betrayed former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The statement read: “El-Rufai is a bad and rotten egg in the APC. He knelt down for Atiku to become BPE chair and later betrayed him. He knelt down for Obj to become a minister and later betrayed him. He knelt down for Buhari to be governor of which later he will betray him. Fear El-Rufai whenever he kneels down before you.
“El-Rufai was never and is still never a Buhari man but a pretender who can kneel down to anyone as long as that can propel him to power. El-Rufai is a man who had abused PMB and only aligned himself with him when Yar’adua and GEJ denied him juicy ministerial positions and recognition he craved.
“El-Rufai is a man who had spent 13 years of the 16 years of PDP in power and now claims false progressive credentials. The heart, the lungs and the “blockos” of El-Rufai are still PDP. He is an arrogant man allergic to criticism. It’s shameful that the El-Rufai, who claims to be a Buharist, still can’t publicly declare his assets like PMB.”