admin
What is power but a wilful mistress, seducing with whispers of immortality before vanishing at dawn? How swiftly does the crown slip from the head of the arrogant, leaving only the sting of a naked scalp? And what judgment awaits the narcissist who mistakes the throne for a birthright, forgetting that history’s ledger always balances in blood and dust? Nasir El-Rufai, once the APC’s golden boy and now its discarded relic, answers these questions with tragic eloquence. His defection this week to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a party as relevant today as a 1970s telephone directory is not a reinvention. It is simply like a requiem or Roman Catholic mass to repose the soul of the dead
El-Rufai stormed into the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014 like a hurricane, promising to sweep away the rot of PDP’s decadence. With a technocrat’s swagger and a tyrant’s heart, he sold himself as Nigeria’s “fixer”. He was widely held as man who could bulldoze problems as easily as he flattened the homes and business premises of his political opponents. His governance was a masterclass in contradiction. He was a reformer who reformed nothing but his own myth, a democrat who ruled like a feudal lord. Southern Kaduna, where mass graves became as common as maize fields, bore the brunt of his cold calculus as religious predator.
El-Rufai’s reign was a hall of mirrors, each reflection more flattering than the last. He dismissed critics as “noise from the illiterate,” tore down markets to erect glass towers for the elite, and sacked teachers en masse, a move that left Kaduna’s schools as hollow as his promises. His Twitter tirades, dripping with contempt for “emotional” Nigerians, revealed a man intoxicated by his own legend. But narcissism, like a poorly built bridge, collapses under the weight of its own delusion.
Politics, they say, has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. El-Rufai learned this too late. His 2007 jab at Tinubu’s Lagos as “a monument to mismanagement” haunted him like a vengeful ghost. In 2022, as Tinubu eyed Aso Rock, El-Rufai doubled down: “No one owns Nigeria,” he sneered, forgetting that in politics, yesterday’s slurs are tomorrow’s shackles. When Tinubu triumphed, El-Rufai crawled back, but the ladder had already been pulled up. The Senate’s rejection of his ministerial bid was not just a snub, it was a verdict. The APC, his once loyal bride, had filed for divorce.
A leader’s true legacy is etched not in headlines but in the quiet fury of the ballot box. In 2023, Kaduna the state El-Rufai claimed to have “transformed” spat out his eight-year experiment in autocracy. The people voted the PDP for president which was a slap as resonant as thunder. The emperor El-Rufai, stripped of his armour, stood naked: his urban renewal now urban ruin, his reforms now a dark tomb of regret.
El-Rufai’s defection to the SDP this week is less a rebirth than a burial. The SDP, as a party is an empty shell . It is no springboard but a hospice. His move reeks of desperation, a fallen general grasping at a toy sword. Once a kingmaker, he is now a jester, prancing on a stage where no one claps.
El-Rufai’s story is an Igbo proverb in motion: “The fly that struts on the back of the bull soon learns the cost of arrogance.” For eight years, he wielded power like a machete, hacking at Southern Kaduna’s unity, slashing at workers’ dignity, chopping down rivals. Today, the blade boomerangs. The APC, his political child, disowns him. The SDP, his new refuge, cannot resurrect what arrogance has slain.
Nigeria’s history is a gallery of fallen giants. El-Rufai now hangs among them, a portrait of hubris. His sin was not his ambition, but his blindness to power’s oldest truth:
The same cane that thrashs the grass today may thrash the farmer tomorrow.
