Nasir el-Rufai: Produce Evidence on Buhari or Shut Up

This Day

24 May 2011

Nasir el-Rufai: Produce Evidence on Buhari or Shut Up

Love him or hate him - and many find it difficult to remain neutral regarding this man who evokes such extreme passions in people – one thing even his worst detractors can’t take from Nasir el-Rufai is his first class brain and analytical thinking.

+++

FUNKE ABOYADE, TOBI SONIYI and ADEBIYI ADEDAPO spent an entire afternoon with the irrepressible Nasir el-Rufai last Wednesday at his home in Abuja. To no one’s great surprise, he held nothing back…

We have just finished watching a video of the post-election killings; it appears it was actually more extensive than was reported in the media. Can you shed more light on this?

The media of the 21^st Century unfortunately relies on a lot of sound bytes and headlines, rather than deep research and attention to facts, so the whole narrative about election violence tended to centre around 10 Youth Corp members and blaming the CPC, rather than taking a holistic view of the situation. In my state Kaduna, hundreds of people were killed; some are even saying thousands because we are still counting bodies and those that are missing, to ascertain whether they are dead or arrested.