El-Rufai In Kano, Says Defections Of Politicians To APC Exaggerated

The immediate-past Kaduna State governor, Nasiru El-Rufai, has described the recent defections of high-profile politicians to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as over exaggerated, saying the development will not affect his effort of founding a solution to the Nigeria’s problem.

He stated this while addressing journalists in Kano on Monday.

El-Rufai explained that he was the first to move to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) from APC in his attempt to find solutions to Nigeria’s problems by doing away with godfatherism in politics.

“The SDP is concerned with finding solutions to Nigeria’s problems and giving opportunity to those that the godfather-type of party politics has totally sidelined and excluded.

“What we want to do is to give all Nigerians interested in leadership and politics equal opportunity to show that he can do better than what we have. Because clearly what we have is not good enough.

“Every Nigerian agrees that what we have now is not good enough and there are many talented Nigerians out there that don’t even want to think about going into politics or public service because they think you need to have a godfather, or you need to have tons of money. We want to remove all these things and unleash the competitive energy of Nigerians, to being their best to the politics and public service.

“This is our goal. As far as I am concerned, the defection of high-profile politicians is not the issue. The issue is who can solve the problem of Nigerians and communicate it to them such that on Election Day they will be motivated to come out and vote for that person.

“These high-level defections are widely exaggerated. Is good for headlines, it’s good to sell your media, but on the ground,politically, if you don’t have the people, you can have as high a profile as possible, you are nothing,” he stated.

El-Rufai stated that he was in Kano for two reasons – to apologise to Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II in advance for his inability to attend an upcoming Emirate event, and to also meet with the SDP members in Kano State.