Former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has said he is unperturbed by critics who describe him as a fundamentalist.
El-Rufai, who spoke in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, dismissed such views, insisting that those who hold them neither know him personally nor have worked with him.
I don’t care. The people who think I am a fundamentalist don’t know me; they have never met me; they have formed their opinion.
Frankly, the reason why my enemies are very vehement at hating me is because I don’t care what they think. It’s the way I am. I am very comfortable with what I am. I don’t care what you think. Those who work with me know me, he said on Sunday.
Asked about perceptions in parts of Southern Kaduna that his leadership style reflected hostility towards them, El-Rufai rejected the notion.
They can think what they think. I don’t tolerate nonsense; governance is not a joke, he stated.
The former governor said, “When you’re governing 10 million people as I did in Kaduna, you must not discriminate between A and B. Nobody can blackmail me that because he is a Christian, the law doesn’t apply to him.
There are people in Southern Kaduna who feel entitled to behave in a certain way, and we didn’t take it; I dealt with them. Some of the closest people I worked with in government are from Southern Kaduna. They know that this is not true.
El-Rufai further explained that during his administration, he stopped several irregular practices and cut down wasteful government spending.
