El-Rufai to Kaduna Assembly: Show how you arrived at figure I siphoned

The immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has lashed out at the State House of Assembly over the probe of his administration.

The House had, on June 5, 2024, called for El-Rufai’s prosecution over alleged abuse of office and money laundering in his administration.

The lawmakers accused El-Rufai’s administration of siphoning N423.1 billion.

El-Rufai served as Kaduna State Governor between 2015 and 2023.

Reacting to the allegations, the former governor, in a statement issued as a follow-up to a press conference addressed by the members of the Kaduna State Executive Council (2015-2023), said the Kaduna State House of Assembly has not responded to formal requests for the certified true copy of the report adopted at its sitting on June 5, 2024.

“Why would the House of Assembly be unable to officially release the report to persons who were summoned by its ad-hoc committee which took their testimonies and then proceeded to write baseless recommendations?” the council members said in a statement issued on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.

The former administration officials noted that El-Rufai was not invited by the ad-hoc committee which made certain claims against him, saying the ex-governor has approached the Federal High Court for the enforcement of his fundamental rights.

They added: “As senior officials in the El-Rufai administration, which served the people of Kaduna State between May 2015 and May 2023, we restate our pride in the dedication and integrity of our service.

“We have previously described the report circulating on social media as an unprofessional document, tainted by bias, exhibiting no serious interest in establishing facts. It is apparent to that the report is riddled with inaccuracies and instances of falsification and misrepresentation of the testimonies provided by invited officials.

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“There is a dissonance between its recommendations and the testimonies the ad-hoc committee heard. It bears restating that its conclusions seem to have been decided beforehand and were insulated from the facts.

“The report is an attempt to inflict maximum reputational damage on certain selected members of the Kaduna State Executive Council, Class of 2015-2023.

“On Page 169, the ad-hoc committee declared ‘that the total amount of moneys siphoned by the Government of Kaduna State from 29th May 2015 to 29th May 2023 is N423,115,028,072.88’. Quite aside from the comical claim that a government siphoned money, nowhere in the report is the trail of the allegedly siphoned funds shown.

“The report does not show how they arrived at this figure, and how they decided that money had been siphoned, how it was done, from which accounts and to where. They just decreed a figure and declared it! This is the ad-hoc committee in action, indulging in voodoo accounting just to concoct a scandal.”

The officials further stated: “If the current administration has begun receiving disbursement from loans that were not drawn down prior to May 2023, it should take the honourable step of transparently disclosing such as well as the projects to which they have been applied and the state of completion of these projects.

“All loans incurred by the El-Rufai administration are within the approved debt thresholds. Even the debt sustainability report prepared by the current administration of the State in November 2023 attests to this.

“So much for loans and the ad-hoc committee’s wilful blindness to see or acknowledge the uses for which the loans were put to, and their futile attempt to saddle the El-Rufai administration with loans that were not disbursed to the state during its tenure.”

The Star