Elements in presidency want Tinubu to lose presidential election, says el-Rufai

Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has alleged that some elements in the Presidential Villa do not want the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to win the presidential election.

While appearing on Channels TV programme, Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, El-Rufai said these elements are sabotaging Tinubu’s campaign by the anti-peoples policies in place.

“I believe that there are elements in the Villa that want us to lose the elections because they didn’t get their way,” El-Rufai said.

“They had their candidate; their candidate didn’t win the primaries and I think they are still trying to get us to lose the elections and they are hiding behind the President’s desire to do what he thinks is right.”

He also said many policies in place by President Muhammadu Buhari were things members of the APC including governors are not in support.

“This petroleum subsidy which is costing the country trillions of naira was something that we all agreed should be removed. In fact, I had a discussion with the President and showed him why it had to go.

“How can you have a capital budget of 200 billion [naira] for federal roads and then spend two trillion on subsidy? This was a conversation I had with the President in 2021 when the subsidy started rising. He was convinced. We left; it changed. Everyone in the government agreed.

“The second example I would give is this currency redesign. You have to understand the President. People are blaming the governor of the Central Bank for the currency redesign.

“No, you have to go back and look at the President’s first outing as president. He did this, the Buhari/Idiagbon administration changed the Nigerian currency and did so in secret with a view to catching those that stashed away illicit funds.

“It’s a very good intention – very clear intention. The President’s heart is white.  But doing it at this time within the time allotted just doesn’t make any political [or] economic sense.

“And for such a programme to work, we have to be involved as governors, as sub nationals, because in my state, there are two local governments without banks, in Borno State, out of 27 local governments, only two have banks, in Yobe State, out of 17 local governments, only two have banks. So, how do you expect farmers in every part to change his currency within the time limit?

“The people of Nigeria should understand that these are not the policies of the APC, these are not the policies of our candidate, they are they policies of fifth-collumists that want to bring us down, they want to bring this country down. Because the governors met some days ago and sent a delegation to meet with the governor of the Central Bank on this matter, we have never been involved in this.

“We said, we are the people who listen to the cries of the people, and we have farmers who have millions of Naira of their hard-earned money who have to travel hundreds of kilometers to take it to banks. We told him to extend the date and let’s work together, the governors with the security agencies will provide vehicles to the banks and CBN and go town to town, village to village, market to market and say come and change your money.

“We support the idea of redesign, we know there are people with stashes of cash, we also want that mopped up, but we shouldn’t in the process make ordinary people suffer or ignite the anger of voters against our party as if it is our party’s policy, it is the policy of a few people and its probably either not well thought through or intentionally designed to crash the political process, because what happens tomorrow if people start protesting because they don’t have cash, they can’t transact because people that deposited the old currency can’t get the new currency,” El-Rufai said.