When Bello El Rufai, one of the sons of the Kaduna State governor publicly threatened to gang rape a senior citizen in a private message to a Twitter user following arguments about politics, many were not surprised. He tweeted “Tell your mother I’m passing her to my friends tonight,” Bello El Rufai said to his critic, before adding an ethnic diatribe: “No Igbo sounds please!”. So, it was a surprise for many when his father and role model recently recanted how Peter Obi, then the governor of Anambra State got him detained while on a mission to monitor the state’s governorship bye-election for APC. Nasir El Rufai said “In 2013, I went to Anambra State as an official of the APC to witness the bye-election for governorship… your next guest, Peter Obi, as governor, got me arrested and detained for 48 hours in my hotel room… Now I’m the Governor of Kaduna State and he’s coming to Kaduna. In addition to the police and the State Secret Service, I have one mechanized division of the Nigerian Army here if I need to arrest and detain anyone…” He ended his statement with an ethnic diatribe like his son – “But we are northerners, we are civilized. We don’t do things like that.”

If not for El Rufai’s level of unreasonableness he would have ended his remark without the last part. But a vulture cannot stop eating dead meat. Its very nature predisposes it to feed on carcasses. For those who have been following the career of El Rufai, he has a reputation for provocative statements with ethnic and religious connotations despite his stellar education. El-Rufai had his secondary education at Barewa College. In 1976, he graduated at the top of his class, winning the “Barewa Old Boys’ Association Academic Achievement” Trophy. El-Rufai attended Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Quantity Surveying with first-class honours. In 1984, he received a Master of Business Administration from Ahmadu Bello University. He has since attended several professional and post-graduate programs, including the Georgetown School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C, and programs on privatization and leadership. In August 2008 he received a law degree from the University of London; and a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University in June 2009. He also received the Kennedy School Certificate in Public Policy and Management having spent 11 months as an Edward A. Mason Fellow in Public Policy and Management from July 2008 to June 2009.

Ordinarily, you would expect someone with such extraordinary education and experience to rise above ethnic and religious bigotry, but the reverse is the case. Nasir El Rufai is a classical example of a man whose education has left him uneducated. Notable members of this group are the three senior advocates of Nigeria in the present Buhari administration – Babatunde Foshalo, Yemi Osinbajo, and Festus Keyamo. It seems whenever highly educated individuals serve dictators and tyrants; they experience an acute deterioration of their intelligence and ethics. For El Rufai, his deterioration is multifaceted and has manifested in his utterances, decisions, and policies. It has also made him evil personified when you take into consideration the rape, kidnappings, and killings going under his watch as the Kaduna State governor with all the military and paramilitary personnel and arsenal at his disposal.

Ata Ukuta, Editor – Towncryyers