Nasir El-Rufai, Kaduna State Governor, has said he owes no apologies to anyone regarding his last week’s advice to Lagos residents to discountenance godfathers in the state’s politics, because he knows none of them.
Governor El-Rufai, however, did not mention any names, but media pundits view his comment as an attack on former Lagos State Governor and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, who has a strong influence on Lagos State politics.
Addressing State House Correspondents after his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, the governor maintained that he stood by what he said, while also dismissing insinuations that he has disagreements with the party’s leadership.
His words: “There is no dispute between me and anyone in the APC. The party is one family and I don’t dispute with my own party. They may dispute with me but I don’t.
“I made comments in Lagos on how to retire godfathers. It is a template that we have used in Kaduna and it has worked. If anybody thinks he is a godfather, the template may apply to him, but I am not in dispute with anyone.
“I expressed my views firmly and very clearly, there is no human being that I am afraid to express my views on and when I am ready to express my views, specifically on a particular name then I will do so but I haven’t.”
Asked if he wants Tinubu retired as godfather of Lagos politics, El-rufai said he was in the same party with Tinubu and that they got along very well, adding: “I don’t know if he is the godfather of Lagos, it is up to him to say that.
“What I know for sure is that we have retired godfathers in Kaduna and I have told those that asked me the question that ‘there are six million registered voters in Lagos but only one million voted in the last election.
“So there are five million people that you can bring into the electoral play ground and you can defeat anyone if you work hard. It’s four years of hard work. That is what I said and if anyone feels offended by that, it is his business.
“I have no apologies, I don’t apologise for my views. My views are thought-out before I express them. I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. This is a democracy and in a democratic space, there must be room for people to express their views.”
