Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has revealed that late ex-President Muhammadu Buhari abandoned his plan to appoint late Chief Audu Ogbeh as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) after being “misled by close associates.”
In a video, El-Rufai said Buhari had decided to give the position to a Christian from the Middle Belt” to balance his government and “dispel claims of religious bias.
El-Rufai recounted a conversation he had with the president-elect at the time.
He said, “I will tell you my last story, which is a sad one. Shortly after the election, a very good friend came to me and said, ‘Look, I want to be the SGF. Can you go to President Buhari and talk to him?”
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When El-Rufai approached Buhari, the president-elect responded, “‘Well, yes, but I want to appoint someone from the Middle Belt, a Christian, as my SGF. Everybody says I don’t like Christians. I want to give the most important job, the most important appointment in the government, to the Middle Belt.”
El-Rufai then asked who he was considering, and Buhari replied, “‘I have only one, Chief Audu Ogbeh.’ I said, ‘Excellent choice, congratulations,’ and left.”
El-Rufai narrated that a cabal around Buhari worked against the decision, as they felt Ogbeh was “too accomplished” and “too independent.”
He said, “So they packaged a story that Chief Audu Ogbeh had an outstanding loan with the bank for his agricultural business to the tune of a billion or two billion. And that if he were appointed SGF, his priority would be to pay off his loans rather than do the job.”
El-Rufai noted that the falsehood eventually changed Buhari’s mind.
He said, “I don’t know how they played President Buhari, but the next time he called me, he said, ‘Look, some things have come up, and I’m appointing someone else as SGF.’”
El-Rufai added, “I asked him, ‘Why?’ It took me time because Buhari is complicated to extract, to teach him to talk. After the SGF was announced, I now found out this was what he was told.”
El-Rufai confronted Buhari, saying, “‘Sir, borrowing is not a crime. Chief Audu Ogbeh is a thriving farmer. He has a big farming business. You can go and see it, and it is functioning. He is paying back the loan. Borrowing is not a crime.”
El-Rufai said this was the first time he had revealed the story to the public.
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