Bafarawa berates El-Rufai over comment on Northern elders
Former Sokoto State Governor, and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa has stated that Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasiru El-Rufai, is uncouth.
Responding to an interview El-Rufa’i granted the Hausa Service of the BBC monitored by News Point Nigeria, in which he described northern elders as ‘mere paperweights’ who cannot swing votes in anyone’s favor, Bafarawa said the Kaduna state Governor, is a Lilliputian with warped reasoning.
El-Rufa’i had claimed 48 hours earlier that there were specific individuals or “elements” working against Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, in the Presidential Villa.
Bafarawa, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, strongly denounced Elrufai’s utterance, in which he lowered the status of northern elders by asserting that the 19 governors of the Northern States are the real elders of the North.
“It’s unbecoming and lack of decorum for anybody to say such a thing about the northern elders. We have honourable and respectable elders in the north, who care about the region and Nigeria as a whole.
“Age has nothing to do with maturity and honour like Elrufai has clearly shown. At 63, he is still bragging about winning elections. We won elections long before he became a politician and we don’t come here to say things disrespectfully.
“The north is bigger than one man and his ambition, and anybody who rubbishes the north, will bear the consequences. We have good and honourable elders and we are proud of them.
“If ElRufai’s definition of northern elders is correct, then there won’t be any reason for this response. But I want to assure him that we will surprise the APC. The north and Nigeria belongs to all of us,” Bafarawa added.
The PDP Chieftain then asserted that, despite the Kaduna governors’ knowledge that the north will not support the APC in the upcoming elections, yet he still decide to deceive Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate, by promising him victory.