Southern Kaduna Killings Were Deliberately Planned by El-Rufai – Defence Minister Musa Alleges

Minister of Defence Christopher Musa has accused former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai of deliberately orchestrating the killings that devastated Southern Kaduna during his tenure.

Musa made the explosive allegation on Thursday while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme, where he described El-Rufai’s administration as “toxic” and accused the former governor of exploiting religious and ethnic divisions for political gain.

The Defence Minister alleged that El-Rufai’s policies created an atmosphere where residents from the southern part of the state could not freely live in the north and vice versa.

“El-Rufai did a lot of terrible things in Kaduna State. He divided the country, the state, into two. In that, if you are from the south, you cannot go to the north to live. Those ones from the north were moving to the south,” Musa stated.

The Minister declared that the people of Southern Kaduna remain deeply traumatised by the violence that occurred during El-Rufai’s tenure, emphasising that the former governor showed no remorse.

“I think if there’s anything worse than unhappy, we can never be happy with somebody who has deliberately planned for the killing of our people,” Musa said.

“He told us he paid bandits. He told us he did this, he did that. He didn’t hide it. He was that arrogant to come out and tell people that this was what he did”.

Musa noted that the current Governor Uba Sani, El-Rufai’s successor, has made deliberate efforts to restore unity and rebuild trust among residents.

“You see, now everybody is free, everybody has a say. It’s not 100%, but you can see that he’s making deliberate effort in uniting the state,” the Minister added.

Broadening his criticism, Musa called on Nigerians to reject politicians who exploit religion, ethnicity, and other differences to divide the country.

“We shouldn’t have those kind of ones in government. Anybody who is using religion or tribe or whatever to divide Nigeria is an enemy of the state,” Musa said.

The Minister also suggested that the country could have faced a different situation if El-Rufai were still in power, describing his approach as promoting “divide and rule”.

“If probably El-Rufai had been around, a lot of things would have gone different because he loves that divide and rule. And that’s the issue,” Musa stated.