Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has publicly refuted allegations of financial impropriety made by the current administration under Governor Uba Sani.
The accusations, which involve an alleged diversion of ₦423 billion, were addressed during a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, where El-Rufai, through his former commissioners, criticized the claims as baseless and misleading.
During the conference, representatives for El-Rufai argued that the financial report released by the Kaduna State House of Assembly on June 5, 2024, implicating the former administration in financial mismanagement, is fundamentally flawed. The former commissioners highlighted the lack of concrete evidence and the arbitrary nature of the financial figures cited in the report. They claimed the accusations were politically motivated and aimed at tarnishing El-Rufai’s reputation and legacy.
The commissioners, who served under El-Rufai from 2015 to 2023, vigorously defended their administration, asserting that the financial dealings during their tenure were transparent and within legal boundaries. They challenged the current administration to provide substantive proof of wrongdoing rather than relying on what they termed as ‘fabricated figures.’
“The avalanche of figures seems only to have had the effect of mesmerizing the legislators who cite one amount here, and then something different on exactly the same figure,” the commissioners stated at the press conference.
According to the former public officials, the alleged siphoning of ₦423,115,028,072.88 by the Government of Kaduna State from May 29, 2015, to May 29, 2023, is a comical claim. They argued that the report does not show where the money was taken from, how it was taken, or by whom. “The Report does not show how they arrived at this figure, and how they decided that money had been siphoned, how it was done, from which accounts, and to where. They just decreed a figure and declared it! This is the Ad-hoc Committee in action, indulging in voodoo accounting just to concoct a scandal.”
The commissioners also pointed out inconsistencies in the financial report. “State Government’s share of revenues is put at ₦811,663,310,000 on Page 138. Yet, by the time they got to Page 168, the Committee had adopted a different figure of ₦1,497,682,993,375, without saying how and why. These contradictory figures within the same Report illustrate the lack of consistency, credibility, and reliability of the so-called findings.”
The former commissioners dismissed the Uba Sani report as a joke taken too far and vilified the current governor for attempting to impugn El-Rufai and his team. They also condemned Governor Uba Sani for involving his brother in writing the report, calling it unethical.
They expressed surprise over the report’s silence on those who benefited from the CBN-sponsored Anchor Borrowers Scheme under the current administration in Kaduna. “There is a loud silence in the Report about the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme in which Kaduna State was perhaps the State with the largest quantum of borrowing. Who are the beneficiaries? Why is the House of Assembly neither interested in nor curious about it?”
The former commissioners accused the authors of the report of conflicts of interest, citing the Speaker of the Kaduna State House of Assembly as an example. The Speaker was investigated by the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS) and had his personal accounts frozen for untaxed and unexplained income. Despite these conflicts, he presided over the session that adopted the Ad-hoc Committee’s recommendation for further investigation into the former administration.
The former commissioners also cited Barr. Mahmud Lawal Isma’ila, a vocal critic of Governor Nasir El-Rufai and a member of the Ad-hoc Committee, as being unqualified to pass judgment due to his familial ties with Governor Uba Sani.
“We have once again drawn attention to the glaring evidence of the hatchet job that passes for the Report and the Ad-hoc Committee. It oozes malice and patent unfairness and raises the question why a House of Assembly that arranged extensive media coverage of its adoption of the Report has refused to provide certified true copies of the same Report more than a month after,” the former commissioners stated.
