Olushola Omogbehin
Nigeria’s former Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has described the decision of the former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, to submit himself to security agencies as a miscalculation.
He disclosed this during an interview on Trust TV, where he claimed that authorities had initially attempted to arrest El-Rufai at the airport but backed off because of the fear that it could lead to unrest.
According to him, the former governor’s eventual decision to submit himself is playing directly into the hands of those pursuing him.
“El-Rufai himself decided to downplay and surrender himself and that’s the greatest mistake he made as a comrade. Comrades don’t surrender. During a struggle, if you surrender yourself, you’re going to be humiliated,” he said.
Maintaining that the case against El-Rufai is built on illegality and not law, he said: “They got him into custody but they didn’t have charges… they started shopping for offences.”
El-Rufai was re-arrested by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission immediately after his release from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
He was subsequently arraigned over allegations including inflated severance payments and dollar-denominated deposits running into hundreds of thousands.
