By Kolawole Ojebisi
A former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, has said that former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was the brain behind many impactful reforms the Olusegun Obasanjo administration is known for.
El-Rufai, however, stressed Atiku is not being given enough accolades for his role in the Obasanjo government.
The former governor stated this on Friday while speaking with reporters during a condolence visit to the family of the elder statesman, Edwin Clark, who died on February 17.
The former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory said Atiku deserves a lot of commendations for economic policy making under Obasanjo.
He said, “Nobody gives Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the credit for economic policy making under the Obasanjo administration. Many of the things we did, we did under his leadership.
“Maybe because we don’t write about it, and people don’t read history, we tend to forget. We only remember negative things. Maybe it’s part of human nature.”
El-Rufai’s positive remarks about Atiku may signal a possible political alliance between him and the former Vice-President as it’s a sharp departure from his past views about the PDP’s presidential candidate.
In his book, “The Accidental Public Servant”, El-Rufai claimed that he had almost resigned as the former Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) because of alleged persistent pressure and interference by Atiku as Chairman of the National Council on Privatization among other disparaging remarks.
Reacting to the claim, the former Vice-President described the book as “‘fiction for self-glorification’, containing ‘half-truths, exaggeration and reflection of selective memory’, characterised by a ‘huge integrity deficit’ and written by someone with a ‘notorious reputation for disparaging religions and their icons’.
