Olayiwola Matthew
President of Southern Kaduna People’s Union (SOKAPU), Samuel Taraba-Kato, has claimed that former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, was the first Nigerian to compensate bandits.
Taraba-Kato, during an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday slammed the former governor for faulting the Federal Government over payment of ransom to bandits
He described the tenure of El-Rufai as Kaduna governor as catastrophic, noting that he mismanaged his office and was power drunk.
He said, “When El-Rufai comes out to make a statement, I feel a sense of sympathy for him. This is a man who had been described by former President (Olusegun) Obasanjo as a pathological liar and a mad man. Each time El-Rufai comes out to conduct himself, he continued to prove this character well said by Obasanjo about him.
“El-Rufai, no sooner he was inaugurated as governor of Kaduna state, among the first utterances he made was that there are only 30% Christians in Kaduna State, and he didn’t stop there, he went to say that the Southern Kaduna people should ignore the issue of indigene and settlers dichotomy. That the attacks in Southern Kaduna were communal clash. Yet it is the same El-Rufai who told the world that he travelled to Chad, Niger and Mali and compensated some killers and ehm, ah, the same man today is coming out to say that it is wrong to pay compensation to bandits.
“Now, in the history of this bandit attacks in this country, El-Rufai had been the first person to demonstrate the idea of paying compensation to bandits, and for him now to come and condemn it. El-Rufai sees governors as a license to do and this is a man few days to his departure as a governor, run out bulldozers to community in Southern Kaduna and started pulling down houses. You see, he has confirmed his character as a mad man.”