The Chairman, Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions, Senator Rafiu Ibrahim has said Governor Nasir El-rufai of Kaduna State still held grudges against Senate President, Bukola Saraki and the entire Red Chamber for turning down his foreign loan request.
He also described El-Rufai as a “loose cannon and a liar”, who was among those that got the All Progressives Congress (APC) into the current mess it found itself.
Reacting to a statement by El-Rufai on a Hausa radio Programme where he described the present Senate under the leadership of Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki as the worst, Senator Rafiu stated that the Kaduna Governor was known as a “flippant and loose talker” as the facts do not support his position.
In a statement personally signed by him, Senator Ibrahim said: “May be we need to educate this aggrieved Governor that this Senate in three years already has the highest number of bills with relevance to improving the economy, eliminating insecurity and corruption since 1999, even though we still have 10 months to the end of our tenure. Similarly, we have treated more petitions than the number that all the past Senate combined had done. Our interventions on key issues that affect the day to day living of Nigerians have remained unparalleled.
“El- Rufai is an aggrieved Governor. He is pained by the rejection of his request for foreign loans by the Senate Committee on Foreign and Local Debt which is headed by a Senator from Kaduna State, Shehu Sanni. The Governor has been speaking from both sides of the mouth.
“He had sent several persons to the Senate President on this loan. I am aware that when he sent the current Minister of Finance to Dr. Saraki, the latter made it known that he too was helpless on the issue as there was no personal reason that will make him stand against such a request. The Senate President advised the Governor to reach out to the three Senators from the State and get them to support the decision as he, the Senate President, would find it difficult to overrule the Senators, particularly since one of them is the chairman of the concerned committee. The three Senators from Kaduna State insisted that an approval for the loan would sentence Kaduna State to many years of indebtedness.
“I am aware of the text message that this same El-Rufai sent to Saraki few weeks ago,thanking him for the useful and supportive discussion the Senate President had with the Minister of Finance on the Kaduna loan issue and commending this same Saraki for the leadership he has provided on a number of issues.”
“For him to now be making this kind of nonsensical and reckless statements against the Senate President shows that he is a double-faced, reckless, immature and unstable liar. People should ignore him. He is one of the people who destroyed APC up to the point that it is and President Buhari had better realized that with a supporter like el-Rufai, he does not need an opponent again,” the Senator stated.
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