An Open Letter to Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai:
By: Nasiru Jagaba jagabanasiru@gmail.com
24/01/26
Power Without Conscience, Silence Without Shame, Blood Without Justice
Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai,
Your recent outbursts about an alleged “silent war against the Muslim North” would deserve serious engagement if they were not built on selective outrage, dangerous amnesia, and a deeply troubling record of governance marked by exclusion, repression, and unanswered bloodshed.
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You did not suddenly discover injustice.
You simply lost monopoly over power.
Where were you when Northern Muslim dominance of Nigeria’s security, judicial, and economic architecture was complete and unquestioned?
You raised no alarm when the National Security Adviser was a Northern Muslim.
You saw nothing wrong when all Service Chiefs were Northern Muslims.
You found no problem when the DSS, Immigration, Customs, Ports Authority, and the Police were all headed by Northern Muslims.
You were comfortable when the Inspector General of Police, Minister of Defence, Attorney General of the Federation, Chief Justice of Nigeria, Chief of Staff to the President, GMD of NNPC, and Downstream petroleum leadership all came from the same bloc.
There were no essays.
No warnings.
No concern about “patterns.”
No fear of a “quiet war.”
Your silence then exposes the dishonesty of your outrage now.
During the Buhari administration you defended with near-religious loyalty, not a single Northern Muslim governor was jailed for corruption. Yet Jolly Nyame of Taraba State and Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, both Northern Christians, were imprisoned.
Did you protest selective justice?
Did you cry religious profiling?
Did you demand balance?
Again—silence.
Your hostility toward Christians in Northern Nigeria is neither imagined nor exaggerated; it is consistent and public. In Kaduna State, you did not merely tolerate exclusion, you institutionalised it. You imposed and celebrated a Muslim–Muslim ticket.
When Kaduna received two ministerial slots, you deliberately denied Christians even one, despite Kaduna’s fragile religious balance and bloody history.
Your cabinet was dominated by your circle, your allies, your people, justified with elitist arrogance and intellectual contempt for pluralism.
But appointments are not your greatest indictment.
Blood is.
Under your watch, Kaduna State descended into a killing field for defenseless communities, especially in Southern Kaduna.
To this day:
• We have not seen the prosecution of the killers of the Adara paramount ruler, murdered in cold blood while returning from a meeting with you. His killers roam free; justice never came.
• The bandits who kidnapped children from Baptist High School were never decisively prosecuted.
• The Adara people were slaughtered, hundreds killed, thousands displaced, yet accountability never followed.
• Kagoro communities in Kaura Local Government were attacked repeatedly; justice never came.
• Atyap communities in Zangon Kataf suffered serial massacres with no meaningful arrests.
• In Kauru Local Government, including Unguwan Magaji–Chawai, 36 people were gruesomely murdered, yet no one was arrested.
And Nigerians are forced to ask:
Did you ever visit these communities?
Did you go to the scenes of the attacks?
Did you send relief materials to victims in Kauru, Kajuru, Zangon Kataf, or Kaura Local Governments?
The answer is painfully clear.
Instead, Nigerians watched something more sinister:
• Victims arrested for defending themselves
• Journalists arrested for speaking against injustice and insecurity
• Community leaders and traditional rulers arrested for raising their voices
• Under your leadership, speech was punished faster than murder, and truth was treated as a crime.
We are not naïve. We know that, even today, some ruthless politicians are willing to gamble with human lives to advance their political ambitions. The recent abduction of 170 worshippers from Kurmin Wali cannot be divorced from politics. It was calculated and deliberate, an attempt to amplify the narrative of Christian genocide in order to attract sympathy, secure buy-in, and provoke U.S. and broader international scrutiny. This is part of a familiar playbook aimed at delegitimising the Tinubu administration, the same strategy previously deployed against President Goodluck Jonathan.
The dead became tools.
The abducted became evidence.
Pain was weaponised.
And then there is the issue of economic injustice.
Your government received over $350 million in World Bank loans, in addition to other local and international borrowings. Yet Southern Kaduna was deliberately isolated and excluded from the benefits of these funds.
Today, the same people you marginalised, Southern Kaduna communities you ignored, excluded, and punished, are paying back these loans through taxes and national debt.
Excluded from development.
Included in repayment.
That is not governance.
That is exploitation.
Let us be clear and stop the deception:
The problem of the North is not President Tinubu.
The problem of the North is the Northern elite.
An elite that monopolised power for decades.
An elite that failed to secure lives.
An elite that watched education collapse and poverty explode.
An elite that tolerated terrorism until it destroyed the dignity, economy, and global reputation of the North.
Terrorism, not appointments, has destroyed the glory of the North.
The real challenge before Northern leaders like you is not reclaiming lost influence in Abuja. It is ending terrorism, accepting responsibility, and rebuilding trust with communities whose blood was shed under your watch.
History does not forget silence.
And it does not reward selective outrage.
(DEMOCRACY NEWSLINE NEWSPAPER, JANUARY 26TH 2026)
