Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, took a swipe at the people he called elements in the Presidency, whom he alledged were bent on inciting voters against the All Progressives Congress.
El-Rufai said this on a TV Continental programme, Journalists’ Hangout, on Thursday, stating that the time frame for the cashless policy was inflicting needless pain on Nigerians.
El-Rufai’s assertion is coming 24 hours after he stated on Channels Television’s Sunrise programme that people whose preferred candidate lost the APC presidential ticket to the former Lagos state governor last year were working against the APC standard bearer.
Previously, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, had stated that the government was not “officially aware” of any entity in the Presidential Villa working against the victory of the APC standard bearer.
On Thursday, El-Rufai vowed that those opposed to the APC presidential candidate would be defeated and also unmasked in time.
Responding to a question, he said, “Unmasking them is not as joyful as defeating them. They will be unmasked in time. But we have defeated them when they wanted their own people in the national working committee of the party.
“We have defeated them when they wanted their own anointed person to be the presidential candidate without due regard, due process or respect for those of us that are governors, that have slaved to put this party together, campaigned for it and delivered the election twice. We didn’t matter.’’
“Meanwhile, none of them has contested an election as a councillor, and if they did, they won’t win. I have been elected twice with over a million votes in Kaduna State. I can claim to speak for the people.
‘’None of these people can. We will come to the unmasking stage, this is not the stage. The stage now is to draw the attention of Nigerians that they are elements that are doing this and they don’t mean well for our party, they want to incite voters against our party, so that we lose the elections.’’
According to him, the cabal misled the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) into taking a decision that would turn Nigerians against the ruling party.
He noted, “Once Nigerians know that, they will know where some of these funny decisions are coming from and when the election is done and settled by the grace of God in about three weeks, and I’m confident, we are not sleeping.
“We are going to work hard until (February) 27th when all the election results are out and by the grace of God, Asiwaju (Tinubu) is elected and other candidates of the APC; then we will unmask them,” he stated.