There is something faintly tragic about watching two men who once styled themselves as reformist crusaders reduce their shared history to a soap opera. Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State and never a stranger to combat, has lately trained his rhetorical artillery on one man with curious persistence: the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu. What began as criticism of policy has curdled into a personalized vendetta. And in prosecuting it so noisily, El-Rufai risks diminishing not only his target but himself.
In recent interviews on ARISE Television, DCL Hausa and elsewhere, El-Rufai has accused Ribadu of directing security agencies to arrest political opponents without investigation, interfering in judicial processes and weaponizing anti-corruption bodies such as the ICPC against him. He has alleged that “someone tapped” the NSA’s phone and told him of plans to effect his arrest. He has suggested that Ribadu harbors presidential ambitions for 2031 and is manipulating security architecture to sideline rivals. He has even accused the government’s security strategy of “empowering bandits” through non-kinetic approaches; an assertion robustly rejected by the Office of the NSA.
These are not minor charges. They are claims that, if true, would amount to a grave abuse of state power. Yet they have been offered in a scattershot manner – heavy on insinuation, light on verifiable evidence. Civil society groups have described them as reckless and unfounded. Ribadu has publicly dismissed the presidential-ambition narrative, stating he has never discussed running in 2031.
The more El-Rufai repeats the accusations, the less they sound like institutional alarm and the more they resemble personal grievance. This is unfortunate. Nigeria’s opposition space – fragmented, timid and often incoherent – does need sharp voices willing to interrogate power. The Tinubu administration offers no shortage of material: stubborn insecurity, a punishing cost-of-living crisis, controversial fiscal reforms, uneven budget implementation and persistent allegations of cronyism. These are matters affecting millions. They deserve sustained, forensic critique.
Instead, El-Rufai appears consumed by a duel. The psychology is not difficult to sketch. His ministerial nomination was rejected by the Senate. His political influence in Kaduna has waned; his anointed successor did not remain tethered to him. Unlike some former governors who retain a loyal bloc of lawmakers and commissioners, El-Rufai has found himself conspicuously isolated. In politics, wounded pride can metastasize into obsession.
But to attribute every reversal to a single individual is to indulge in convenient mythology. It is easier to cast Ribadu as puppet-master than to concede that alliances shift, protégés evolve and reputations carry consequences. Both men share reformist pedigrees. Ribadu, as former chairman of the EFCC, built his brand on anti-corruption enforcement. El-Rufai, as FCT minister and later governor, cultivated a persona of abrasive candor and technocratic zeal. For years they occupied similar terrain: insurgents against entrenched decay. That their paths have diverged is not scandalous; it is politics.
What is unedifying is the spectacle of dirty linen being flung across television studios. Opposition politics, to be credible, must rise above personal score-settling. It gains moral authority when it confronts systems rather than individuals; when it challenges structural weaknesses instead of prosecuting vendettas. A sustained critique of how security agencies are supervised, how intelligence is deployed, or how non-kinetic strategies are funded would be legitimate. A barrage of personalized allegations; especially those sourced to unnamed tappers of telephones, sounds less like statesmanship and more like settling old scores.
El-Rufai is too experienced not to know the distinction. There is also a danger of inflation. When every setback is framed as persecution orchestrated by a rival, genuine abuses of power, should they occur, are harder to discern. The public grows fatigued. The line between whistle-blowing and whining blurs. The accuser’s credibility erodes. Meanwhile, Ribadu is not well served by this theatre either. Even if the allegations are baseless, their constant repetition drags the Office of the National Security Adviser into a personality contest. It shifts attention from the formidable task of coordinating security responses in a country battling insurgency, banditry and communal violence. It encourages the perception that high office is merely another arena for elite rivalry.
Nigeria has endured enough of that. If El-Rufai possesses evidence of misconduct, the responsible course is clear: present it through appropriate legal and institutional channels. If he believes security agencies are being misused, marshal facts, not innuendo. If he fears creeping authoritarianism, articulate a systemic critique that transcends the identity of the office-holder. What he should resist is the temptation to turn every microphone into a grievance confessional.
There is an old saying about the donkey rider who ignores the donkey and whips the pannier. In lashing out at Ribadu as the embodiment of his misfortunes, El-Rufai risks ignoring the more proximate sources of his predicament: shifting political coalitions, his own combative style, and the brutal arithmetic of power. History is rarely kind to men who allow personal estrangements to eclipse public purpose. It remembers those who challenged overreach with evidence and clarity; it forgets those who prosecuted feuds in prime time.
El-Rufai once relished being the enfant terrible of Nigerian politics; a disruptor who said aloud what others muttered. That role, if reclaimed with discipline, could still serve the republic. But it cannot be sustained by an obsessive fixation on a former friend. Elite disagreements are inevitable. Public governance by insinuation is not. For the sake of their own legacies; and for a polity already exhausted by factional theatrics, both men would do well to lower the temperature. Nigeria’s problems are vast enough without reducing them to a duel between estranged allies. Opposition should be about holding power to account, not about washing linen in public and calling it reform.