Cash scarcity : Aso Rock elements inciting voters against APC – El-Rufai

Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State, continued his tirade against what he called “elements in the Presidency” on Thursday. He claimed that they were determined to turn voters against the All Progressives Congress.

The governor claimed that the deadline for the cashless scheme was causing unnecessary suffering to Nigerians in an interview with Journalists’ Hangout on a TV Continental program.

El-Rufai made this statement at the same time as Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate, urged voters to cast ballots “even if they devalued the naira tremendously” at the party’s campaign event in Osogbo.

He said, “Nothing they will say.., even if they devalue naira, where we will vote is not far from our house. We will trek down there. We will trek down to the polling booths. Where they put ballot boxes, we will get there. It is not always easy to take a palm kernel from its shell.”

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.

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.

But the Kaduna State governor appeared to be echoing Tinubu who cited the naira redesign policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria and the lingering fuel crisis as part of plots to thwart the poll and his expected victory.

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.’’

The former FCT minister explained that the APC was working hard to win the election, adding that the party would expose those behind the plot against Tinubu.

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.