It is funny how Nigerian politicians change colours like the chameleon. When they are in power, they behave as if power is their inheritance and life possession that they can hold on to forever. However, when power unfolds its true nature to them as a transient and ephemeral object, they will start throwing tantrums. They become experts in lobbing jabs at the establishment as if they have been a radical hothead, always non-conformist, all their lives. Such people will be bitter, loquacious, and irreverent. Well, maybe these apply to some of them. A few of them can manage the out-of-power situation with grace and equanimity.

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Yesterday’s men who were running down all the other people opposed to their camp when they were in power, those who were defending all the wrong policies of the past administration and boasting that they could make the afternoon become overwhelmed with darkness are now preaching good conduct after they have lost power.

It is from this perspective that I view the recent tweet by Mallam Nasir Ahmad El Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna State. In the tweet, he used a quote by the US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris to charge Nigerian politicians about the need to churn envy and what in local parlance is also known as the ‘Pull-Him-Down syndrome’.

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In a seven-paragraph commentary released on Sunday on his X (formerly known as Tweeter) handle, El Rufai quoted the section of Harris’s speech at the party’s recently concluded national convention that: “NONE of us has to fail for ALL of us to succeed. And in unity, there is strength”. The former governor of Kaduna State then commented that “envy is quite prevalent amongst the key actors in our political system”. He added that “competence, capacity, and commitment are some personal leadership qualities that attract the envy of those lacking or deficient in these indices”.

Reading through El Rufai ‘s commentary, one cannot but conclude that it is a good message delivered by a bad and hypocritical messenger. The former governor of Kaduna State represents all the bad attributes in the Nigerian political system that he cautioned against in that commentary. He is the one who specialises in destroying those he considers his possible rivals. He is the typical power monger. He deliberately aligns himself with the man at the apex of power and uses that proximity to victimize, undermine, and endanger those he considers likely rivals.

He would also be arrogant while dealing with such rivals who are unfortunate enough not to have the ears of the powerful man that El Rufai had manipulated and made to hate the people he just marked out for destruction. He always seeks to be the only star on the horizon. He talks about competence, capacity, and commitment. He should search his mind very well. He will come up with a list of politicians with a bigger quantum of such values that he has shot down or destroyed.

Let El Rufai tell Nigerians what motivated the war of attrition that he waged against the three Senators who represented his state between 2015 and 2019. I am talking of Senators Shehu Sani, Danjuma Lar, and Suleiman Hunkuyi. He demolished Hunkuyi’s house as a way of financially weakening him. Was that act not malice, abuse of power, persecution, and mental torture borne out of envy and political rivalry?

It is an open secret that when Bukola Saraki emerged as Senate President against the expectations of some APC leaders, El Rufai was part of the clique that poisoned President Muhammadu Buhari’s mind that Saraki would move against his presidency using the power of his office as head of the legislature.

Is it a coincidence that El Rufai was initially listed as one of the five witnesses to testify for the Federal Government against Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal between 2015 and 2016? See Vanguard Newspaper report on October 17, 2015. He was said to be one of the hawks pushing the Buhari government to deal with the then-Senate President. This power clique came up with the idea that the trial at the CCT was the easiest and fastest way to nail Saraki and get him out of the Senate Presidency.

Some of the propaganda against Saraki, when he was Senate President between 2015 and 2019, was sponsored from Kaduna, including the billboards erected near the National Assembly complex which were used to publish disparaging messages against Saraki. The Saraki case was a perfect example of how Nigerian politicians “nurtured destructive thoughts and actions, including unspeakable crimes like perjury, malicious prosecution, unlawful imprisonment, torture and even more” against the subject of their envy and petty jealousy. And who was the lead schemer? The new preacher, Mallam El Rufai.

In the same manner, he waged a campaign of calumny against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu at a time when he believed Buhari had made up his mind not to support the then APC leader. That was in May 2019 at a conference organised by the Bridge Club headed by Barrister Muiz Banire, SAN, an aggrieved protege of Tinubu. El Rufai proclaimed that he would teach the people of Lagos State how to deal with and incapacitate a Godfather, by which he meant Tinubu.

Even after the 2022 APC convention where Tinubu emerged as presidential candidate, he was still reluctant to work for the man. He grudgingly came on board with a huge sense of entitlement. When he lost out on the sharing of ministerial positions, he started moving around mobilising support and preaching that envy, hate, and malice are the bane of Nigerian politics. Is he just waking up to this reality? Has he just become so wise that he can now sermonise about how his specialty – the Pull Him Down syndrome – has destroyed Nigerian politics and deprived it of men and women with capacity, competence, and commitment?

Is it not this same El Rufai who declared on national television that international observers sent to monitor the 2019 general election in Nigeria could “return to their country as body bags”?

As an academic who is not a member of any political party and who is not interested in contesting elections, my interest is the development of our country and to ensure the politicians provide good governance. It is for this reason, I urge Nigerians not to be taken in by insincere sermons being delivered by selfish politicians.

With that message on X (formerly Twitter), El Rufai is simply bemoaning his current fate. He has not had any change of mind and like the leopard, he cannot change his skin. He is out of power now and he is not enjoying it. He cannot imagine that he could be dumped out of the government he believed he helped in putting into office. He is just using those comments to console himself and plan for when the table will turn in his favour. By now, he probably has a list of men that must go down for him to rise and those he will shoot down when he returns to power. He is a hypocrite of the highest order.

To take him seriously, El Rufai should go and do right by the numerous people he had pulled down out of envy. He should seek atonement for his numerous sins against Nigeria and its people. He should also continue to seek forgiveness from his maker.

Kabir-Yesbit, Ph.D, a university lecturer, writes from Abuja.