El-Rufai is like a scorpion, Buhari must be careful of him or be ruined- Sani

If Senator Shehu Sani had his way, Governor el-
Rufai of Kaduna State must be made to pay
dearly for a leaked September 2016 dated
document in which he rattled the presidency and
the President.
Published Thursday on most media platforms, el-
Rufai is quoted to have said, amongst other
things, that President Buhari was not driving the
Change Agenda of the ruling All Progressives
Congress (APC) very well. He also alleged that
some very close aides to the President such as
the Secretary to Government of the Federation
(SGF), Babachir Lawal, and Chief of Staff, Abba
Kyari were “clueless” and “inexperienced”.
Senator Shehu Sani, however, on Saturday called
out el-Rufai for deliberately leaking the document
in which the the President, the presidency and
the ruling party were ridiculed.
El-Rufai could be likened to a Scorpion or Cobra,
he alleged. He warned President Buhari to be
careful saying, “he who keeps a scorpion in his
pocket must always watch his groin and he who
inherits a cobra should know that it’s not a pet.’ Describing the Kaduna State governor as one
intolerant of criticism, he berated him for having
the audacity to find faults with President Buhari,
and even himself also. “The difference,” he
claimed, “is that the President is tolerant of
criticisms and alternative views” while el-Rufai is
“dubious.”
“The governor always recommends that our party
should punish me for criticising him. Now that he
has fired a cruise missile at the President
through a deliberately leaked memo, he should
also be treated the same way. He accused me of
being disloyal and disrespectful to the President
and the party for speaking my mind,” he said.
Sani who said that his opposition to el-Rufai
was founded on principles, however, called for
severe sanctions to be meted out to the
governor, saying, “Now he has done his own
cunningly by criticising the President and the
party, disguised it as a memo and leaked it out
to the press.
“If our able party chair would give me five
strokes of the cane for speaking out, the
governor (El Rufai) should be given thrice that
for ‘leaking out.”
He added, “It’s often said that look at the
message and not the messenger, but there are
times when you can only decipher the message
by looking at the messenger.”
Sani, who is the Vice-Chairman, Senate
Committee on Foreign Affairs, accused el-Rufai
of entrenching politics of exclusion and
habouring cabals.
His tough stance on the Kaduna governor has
been linked to deep differences between him and
el-Rufai. The governor is perceived as the
unseen hand in the attempt to sideline the
Senator in the party leadership or even expel him
from the party in Kaduna State.
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