El-Rufai: Being a governor is not an easy job… I feel like running away

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, says it is not easy to preside over the affairs of many people.

Speaking at an election summit organised by the Kaduna State Peace Commission, the governor said at times he feels like running away.

He said he would accept defeat if he loses the 2019 governorship election, adding that he would be in a hurry to pack out of the government house.

The governor said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is committed to the peaceful conduct of the general election.

“Let me first speak as the governorship candidate of the APC. Our party is committed to peace and peaceful elections. The political parties that merged into the APC were victims of rigged elections and the consequential violence that came with it,” he said.

“It is the rigging of elections that leads to violence. It was the massive rigging of the elections in 2011 that led yo the wide spread violence at that time and Kaduna state alone, lost over 800 lives.

“As the candidate of the APC, I am saying here and now that I am in a hurry to park out of the government house if the people do not vote for me.

“I will be the first to concede and I want to tell all that want to be governor that it is not an easy job… I want to run away.

“It is just that when I look at those that want to be governor and what they have done to the state in the past, I have a duty to protect the state, the ordinary people of the state from the evils of past.”

The governor also vowed to deal with anyone who promotes hate speech and religious sentiments on social media in the state.

“This is the biggest problem we are facing as a sitting government and I want to appeal to all of us politicians to reflect, think and desist from this because when you destroy lives by giving young people weapons and drugs for election purposes, what do you do with them after you win. They become a monster that is difficult to control,” the governor said.

“We have no thugs in the APC. All those that campaign with us, we try to empower them to be employed so that they will be off the street.

“These are very serious issues for us so I want to appeal to my colleagues to temper our language, because politics is not war.

“We are doing that vigorously; we do not care what people say. Anyone that comes to Kaduna and say something or even say it outside Kaduna and his house is not in Kaduna state, no matter who he is, whether he calls himself bishop or Imam or Sheikh, whether he calls himself chief or Hakimi, we will bring him to justice.

“We will arrest and bring him to Kaduna and prosecute him and we are on the trail of many of them that have insignificantly done this. Some in Abuja, some in Lagos, we will bring them to Kaduna and try them for incitement, for malicious falsehood, for hate speech. We are determined to do that and we will not politicise it because the protection of lives and property should never be politicise.”