Chidi Odinkalu is a prisoner of truth. And only an honest acceptance by Odinkalu that he is the king of big lies on any issue that concerns Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state, victim of his falsehoods, will set Odinkalu free of his prejudices and hate. Hate, like they say, blinds. And Odinkalu’s hatred for El-Rufai has blinded him, such that El-Rufai can never do good in his eyes.
Odinkalu, sadly, reminds one of the saying that cockroaches will always be guilty in the court of chickens,just as chickens are guilty in the court of hawks.
El-Rufai’s crime is daring to frontally lead the challenge by the governors against the currency redesign policy of the federal government. He threw spanners in what they thought was their “flawless plot”; the resounding defeat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates. For the Villa forces and Odinkalu, El-Rufai is a legitimate subject for the media attack that he has been subjected to, for what they consider his high crime. Abubakar Malami, definitely, the worse Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, has confirmed that security agents are investigating some governors for alleged treason.
It’s not surprising that while most people agree that the policy has adversely affected more poor Nigerians than the politicians that President Muhammadu Buhari and Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), claim are the main target, only Odinkalu and the Villa forces believe otherwise.
El-Rufai, who is not a stranger to battles, expected the vicious campaign of calumny, when he decided to lead the challenge against the black policy.
El-Rufai, equally, knows the vicious media attacks are their immediate reaction and is smart enough to anticipate other attacks by the Villa forces, which thankfully planned their onslaught against the APC without reckoning with him. It’s interesting to see strange bedfellows; Odinkalu, and the Villa forces united for once on the need to teach El-Rufai some lessons.
Premium Times quoted the president as saying “I am aware that this new monetary policy has also contributed immensely to the minimisation of the influence of money in politics”. By stating that the main objective was ensuring that candidates for the 2023 general elections lack the capacity to buy votes, the president and the CBN weaponised the policy. Thankfully, they failed to achieve the defeat of the ruling APC, Tinubu won the elections.
In lawn tennis, what Nigerians are presently experiencing is known as unforced error. There was no compelling urgency for the hasty and poor implementation of the policy, which has unleashed the predicted untold hardships on the poor people and tanked the economy, that is still struggling to recover from the Covid-19 induced recession.
Odinkalu is a professor of law that has become notorious for making unfounded and false statements, just like the recent one against El-Rufai on the currency redesign.
It is wicked of Odinkalu to have claimed that El-Rufai is spear-heading opposition to the policy, because it adversely affects him, without any evidence.
Odinkalu said: “ The issue is that some governors who have collected money that should have been used to develop their people have locked it up to use it to buy votes. That is the issue. So I’m very clear about what the issues are sir and you will not derail me and those governors include El-Rufai and El-Rufai is carrying it on his head. Let him sue me if he wants to. Now, what is the matter here? That people like El-Rufai want to buy elections?”
El-Rufai and Odinkalu, in Nigerian parlance, are old customers. In 2019, Odinkalu on television had made outlandish claims against El-Rufai over the Kajuru crisis. Irked by Odinkalu’s reckless falsehood, the state government dragged him before a Kaduna state magistrate court for injurious falsehood, incitement, public disturbance and furnishing false information; offenses punishable under sections 77, 373, 104 and 150 of the Penal Code Law of Kaduna State. The state government also applied and secured an order of the court for the Nigeria Police to investigate the allegations against Odinkalu and report back to the court.
Odinkalu lost the case, despite his efforts to get the magistrate court to dismiss it. He also lost the enforcement of his fundamental human rights case at the federal hight court and fined N2 million by the court.
Odinkalu, having previously lost other boxing bouts to El-Rufai, has refused to give up on his self imposed mission to destroy El-Rufai, hence the fallacy he can’t defend. Those who know Odinkalu expect him to run from one court to another seeking refugee, like he did in the past, including temporarily relocating to Ghana, if need be.
Man is, indeed, a funny animal, which is why it no longer matters to the opposition that Buhari, whose sheer incompetence and nepotism are largely responsible for the hatred of the party by some Nigerians, is today being hailed as a messiah for implementing the dubious policy. Just as it doesn’t matter to them that Emefiele, clearly the worst governor of the CBN, didn’t introduce the policy for altruistic purposes. In fact, if the opposition can, they will confer an award on him for services rendered to the opposition.
Odinkalu will go to any length to paint El-Rufai black. And he hardly disappoints in his misadventures. In his typical style, Saint Odinkalu portrayed Gabriel Idibia, a journalist with The Union newspaper, as a victim of El-Rufai’s impunity, when all El-Rufai did was to take Idibia to court to prove his wild allegation that El-Rufai in anticipation of what he expected to steal doctored his assets. Odinkalu, in making his wild claims, provided no evidence of El-Rufai ever resorting to self help.
In 2015, El-Rufai had dragged Today’s Publishing Company Ltd, publishers of The Union newspaper and Idibia, its Kaduna state reporter, to the Kaduna state high court, to substantiate the defamatory allegation, that he falsely declared N90 billion and 40 mansions in his asset declaration.
In his judgement, Justice M.L. Muhammed of the Kaduna state high court, held that El-Rufai had “clinically demonstrated” that he never declared assets worth N90 billion and 40 mansions” and the publication as utterly false, with no justifiable legal grounds. He consequently ordered the defendants to pay El-Rufai N10 million as general damages and to tender an unreserved apology, which must be published in two national dailies El-Rufai wasted no time donating the money to orphanages.
“The implication of the words contained in the publication are manifestly false and defamatory of the plaintiff. The documents submitted by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), clearly show that the plaintiff didn’t declare assets worth N90bn and 40 mansions”, said Justice Mohammed.
Once A.U. Mustapha SAN, El-Rufai’s erudite lawyer, concludes the currency redesign assignment, he will face the Chidi Odinkalu challenge.
Musa writes from Kaduna.
