El-Rufai planned setting AIT ablaze – Fani-Kayode

Nigeria’s Ambassador to Germany, Femi Fani-Kayode, has accused a former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, of plotting to set ablaze the African Independent Television (AIT) when he served as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The former Minister of Aviation made the allegation in a post on his X handle on Sunday in reaction to another tweet.

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The earlier tweet was by the Publisher of Point Blank News, Jackson Use.Breaking news alerts

Fani-Kayode tweeted: “The publisher of Pointblank News @pointblanknews, Jackson Ude @jacksonpbn, posted a note on his X handle which I read with interest.

“I can confirm all he wrote about Nasir El Rufai’s @elrufai plans for the late Raymond Dokpesi’s AIT @AIT_Online television station when he was Minister of FCT.

“Nasir did not just attempt to close down AIT & seize the land on which it was built but he also illegally confiscated large swathes of surrounding land which AIT had paid for & had valid certificates of occupancy & he knocked down some of their buildings without due process & against court orders.

“There were other aspects of the matter which Ude failed to mention either because he is keeping his gun powder dry like the seasoned fighter that he is or because he does not know.

“Worse amongst them is the fact that, after Nasir was directed to desist from harassing Dokpesi & AIT, he resorted to planning to burn the whole place down!

“Unfortunately for him & fortunately for AIT the plan leaked to a number of OBJ insiders & was opposed by Gen. Abdullahi Mohammed, OBJ’s Chief of Staff, Remi Oyo, OBJ’s Press Secretary, Nuhu Ribadu @NuhuRibadu the then Chairman of EFCC, Akin Osuntokun, the then Political Advisor to OBJ, Uba Sani @ubasanius, the then Senior Special Assistant to OBJ on Public Affairs, my good self, the then Minister of Culture & Tourism & a number of others because it was a cruel criminal act & because people’s lives would have been endangered

“Had it not been that we intervened, ensured the plan was aborted & threatened to report the entire matter to OBJ Nasir would have gone ahead, AIT would have been burnt to the ground & the cause of the fire would have been attributed to an electrical fault.

“During OBJ’s time we did not lock up, suppress or kill journalists but rather responded to our critics in the media forcefully & vigorously.

“El Rufai wanted to change all that & those of us that spoke for OBJ opposed his draconian agenda.

“The late Sam Nda Isaiah, the founder & publisher of Leadership Newspaper @LeadershipNGA, who was a brother to me, was probably the most virulent critic of OBJ & every Monday we would look out for his back page column which was always scathing & hostile to our Government. Actually the truth is that he more than any other gave us nightmares.

“Rather than lock him up, plan to kill him or burn down his newspaper house we engaged him in healthy & oftentimes volatile debate.

“If El Rufai had had his way we would not have left it at that.

“It is the recollection of his evil intentions for AIT when he was Minister & his inability to stomach criticism from others that gave me cause for concern when he falsely alleged that the NSA has imported  chemical weapons & lethal poisons into the country for “unknown purposes” & when he said he tapped the latter’s telephone.

“My fear, & I reiterated it in my essay titled ‘More Questions For Nasir El Rufai’, is that he & his associates may be the ones that have actually smuggled those chemical weapons & poisonous substances into our country & that they are planning a deadly false flag attack in which many will be killed which they will then blame on the FG.

“I may be wrong but this must be looked into & we must not take any chances.

“A man that can conspire to burn down the nation’s top  television station, as AIT was at the time, simply because it opposed the Government he served & because he coveted the land that it was built on is capable of anything.

“That is the level of El Rufai’s depravity & given the grave and serious confessions & comments he made in his interview with Charles Aniagolu @charlesaniagolu on Arise Television@ARISEtv we need to take this very seriously.”