Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has launched a scathing attack on his successor, Governor Uba Sani, accusing him of fabricating financial figures to smear his administration.
El-Rufai, speaking through his former commissioners at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, vehemently denied allegations that his administration misappropriated a staggering sum of N423,115,028,072.88.
The commissioners, who served under El-Rufai from 2015 to 2023, criticized a report released by the Kaduna State House of Assembly on June 5, 2024, which they claim lacks credibility and consistency.
According to them, the report failed to provide evidence or specifics on how the alleged misappropriation occurred, describing it as a collection of contradictory figures and unfounded accusations.
The commissioners highlighted discrepancies and apparent conflicts of interest among the authors of the report.
The commissioners said, “The avalanche of figures seems only to have had the effect of mesmerising the legislators who cite one amount here, and then something different on exactly the same figure.
“The Report does not show how they arrived at this figure, and how they decided that money had been siphoned, how it was done, from which accounts and to where. They just decreed a figure and declared it!
“This is the Ad-hoc Committee in action, indulging in voodoo accounting just to concoct a scandal.
“State Government’s share of revenues is put at N811,663,310,000 on Page 138. Yet, by the time they got to Page 168, the Committee had adopted a different figure of N1,497,682,993.375, without saying how and why.
“These contradictory figures within the same Report illustrate the lack of consistency, credibility and reliability of the so-called findings.
“The Ad-hoc Committee alleges that a State Government “siphoned” more than half of the N811.6bn it got as revenues over eight years, but it cannot even decide on the precise amount of these total revenues.”
Furthermore, the former officials accused Governor Sani of nepotism, alleging that his close familial ties influenced the creation of the report.
They also pointed out glaring omissions in the report, such as the lack of investigation into the CBN-sponsored Anchor Borrowers Programme under the current administration.
“This report is nothing but a hatchet job aimed at besmirching our reputations,” declared the commissioners, challenging the credibility of those involved in compiling and endorsing the document.
“There is a loud silence in the Report about the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme in which Kaduna State was perhaps the State with the largest quantum of borrowing.
“Who are the beneficiaries? Why is the House of Assembly neither interested in nor curious about it? When Ibrahim Husaini, a former Commissioner of Agriculture, testified on 7th May 2024, he was questioned about the Anchor Borrowers Programme, and he submitted an affidavit to the House of Assembly.
“Curiously, his name does not appear on the list of witnesses and his testimony is omitted in the Report. Did his testimony contain certain inconvenient facts that the Ad-hoc Committee chose to steer clear?”
They criticized the Speaker of the Kaduna State House of Assembly for presiding over the sessions that led to the report’s adoption despite alleged conflicts of interest.
They said, “Despite these obvious conflicts he presided at the House of Assembly session that adopted the Ad-hoc Committee’s recommendation that the former chairman of KADIRS and the former Managing Director of Kaduna Markets be referred for further investigation.
“We have once again drawn attention to the glaring evidence of the hatchet job that passes for the Report and the Ad-hoc Committee.
“It oozes malice and patent unfairness and raises the question why a House of Assembly that arranged extensive media coverage of its adoption of the Report has refused to provide certified true copies of the same Report more than a month after.
“It cannot be a reasonable assumption on their part that we will meekly accept this breach of fundamental rights or cower in the face of this premeditated assault on our reputations.”
Governor Uba Sani’s office has yet to issue an official statement in response to these allegations.
