Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufa’i, caused a reaction when he said he would have retaliated against what Peter Obi, as former Governor of Anambra State, did to him when he visited the State to monitor an election.
El-Rufa’i, while addressing Arewa Joint Committee in Kaduna State and alleged that Peter Obi, the current presidential candidate of the Labour Party, (LP), put him under house arrest for 48 hours in Anambra State during the election. According to him, Obi, who was seeking a second-term in office on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, (APGA), in 2013, got him arrested and detained for 48 hours when he visited Anambra to monitor the State’s governorship bye-election.
The governor threw the audience including the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, into a hilarious frenzy when he joked that he had all the security architecture at his disposal now that the LP candidate was also coming into his domain.
He said: “I would have also arrested the former governor who is in the State for his 2023 presidential campaign in the next few days”, stressing that he has the 1st Mechanized Division of the Army in Kaduna that could carry out the arrest. The governor, however, said he will not arrest Obi because Northerners are civilised people.
Obi had, however, defended his position during a youth programme in Nnewi in 2018, saying el-Rufa’i was being overzealous by accusing him of bigotry, given the circumstances that led to his arrest.
