MUSA HAS OPENED A PANDORA’S BOX. NOW, LET HIM OPEN THE FILES

MUSA HAS OPENED A PANDORA’S BOX. NOW, LET HIM OPEN THE FILES

By Solomon Dalung, Esq.

General Christopher Musa has opened a Pandora’s box. Now, he must be prepared to open the files.

I have listened carefully to the Defence Minister’s recent comments about former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, and I believe Nigerians should resist the temptation to reduce the controversy to another political quarrel between two prominent northerners.

There is something much more serious here.

General Musa did not merely accuse El-Rufai of mishandling insecurity in Kaduna. He did not simply criticise his policies or describe his administration as divisive.

He made a far heavier allegation.

«“We can never be happy with somebody who deliberately planned for the killing of our people.”»

When the interviewer pressed him on the seriousness of the allegation, Musa doubled down. He urged Nigerians to examine El-Rufai’s videos and speeches, claiming that the former governor had openly spoken about paying bandits and other things he allegedly did while in office.

That is not an ordinary political accusation.

It is an allegation of deliberate criminal intent.

And because the person making it is not an ordinary politician but Nigeria’s Minister of Defence and a former Chief of Defence Staff, his words carry institutional weight. That institutional weight demands a correspondingly high standard of evidence.

So there are questions that must now be answered.

But before those questions, Nigerians need to understand the history behind the controversy.

KADUNA DID NOT BEGIN BURNING IN 2015

One of the easiest ways to distort history is to begin the story at the point most convenient to one's argument.

Kaduna’s history of communal conflict did not begin with Nasir El-Rufai.

The region’s fault lines are decades old.

General Martin Luther Agwai, a Southern Kaduna-born four-star general, has traced the history of the region’s crises through the early 1970s, the 1987 Kafanchan crisis, the 1992 Zangon Kataf crisis, the 2000 Sharia crisis and the 2011 post-election violence.

Among the factors identified over the years are pastoral grazing, land and boundary disputes, drug abuse, political competition and the deeply contentious indigene-settler question.

Human Rights Watch has similarly documented major Kaduna outbreaks in 1987, 1992 and 2000, pointing to complex interactions involving political, economic, religious and ethnic tensions.

This historical context matters.

It does not absolve El-Rufai of responsibility for what happened during his administration.

A governor must be judged by how he responds to the problems he inherits.

But there is a fundamental difference between saying:

“El-Rufai governed Kaduna during a period of terrible violence, and his policies or failures contributed to it.”

And saying:

“El-Rufai deliberately planned the killing of Southern Kaduna people.”

The first is a proposition that can be examined through governance records and policy decisions.

The second is an allegation of criminal intent.

It requires evidence.

WHY THE AGWAI COMMITTEE MATTERS

When El-Rufai became governor in 2015, he appointed General Martin Luther Agwai to investigate the Southern Kaduna crisis.

That fact deserves greater attention.

Who was Agwai?

He was not an outsider parachuted into Kaduna.

He was born in Kagoro, Southern Kaduna, and rose through the Nigerian Army to become Chief of Army Staff and subsequently Chief of Defence Staff.

His involvement therefore carries considerable significance.

The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue’s contemporaneous documentation of the peace process associated with the Agwai Committee described the violence as having roots in the legacy of the 2011 post-election violence, while also identifying longer-running pastoralist-farmer conflicts and the indigene-settler dichotomy.

In other words, the committee was dealing with a conflict whose history predated El-Rufai’s administration by decades.

The recommendations included dialogue, peace-building and reconciliation, including the proposal for a permanent Peace and Reconciliation Commission.

This is important because it provides context for one of the most controversial aspects of El-Rufai’s administration: compensation.

THE MONEY EL-RUFAI SAID HE PAID

El-Rufai publicly acknowledged in 2016 that his administration had paid compensation to some Fulani.

There is no reason to pretend otherwise.

But the circumstances surrounding those payments matter enormously.

According to contemporary accounts, the Agwai Committee had traced much of the recent violence to the aftermath of the 2011 post-election crisis and distinguished between settled, semi-settled and transhumant Fulani.

El-Rufai said his administration reached out to some transhumant Fulani, including some outside Nigeria, and offered compensation for deaths and livestock lost during earlier violence, with the objective of ending reprisals.

Some reportedly accepted the appeal without payment. Others requested compensation for cattle losses, and some payments were made.

That is the documentary trail that requires examination.

And General Agwai himself subsequently intervened when the issue became controversial.

His position was clear: if compensation was being paid in relation to the Southern Kaduna crisis, all aggrieved parties should be considered, not only herdsmen.

He warned that compensating only one side would amount to partial implementation of the committee’s recommendations. Churches, mosques and other affected persons, he noted, were also among those who suffered losses.

Now compare that record with General Musa’s statement:

«“He told us he paid bandits.”»

That statement demands clarification.

Who exactly were the people allegedly paid?

Were they active bandits?

Were they criminal gangs?

Were they individuals who had participated in attacks?

Or were they Fulani who had lost cattle and family members during the 2011 violence and whom the Agwai peace process sought to compensate as part of an effort to end reprisals?

These are not semantic distinctions.

They are radically different factual propositions.

If Musa is referring to a different payment, he should identify it.

If he is referring to the compensation El-Rufai publicly acknowledged, Nigerians deserve to know why a documented compensation and reconciliation process is now being characterised as “paying bandits.”

THEN ANOTHER GENERAL ENTERS THE STORY

The controversy becomes even more intriguing when another retired general enters the discussion.

Major-General Danjuma Ali-Keffi, who served as General Officer Commanding 1 Division in 2021, has publicly challenged Musa to produce evidence.

Ali-Keffi did not merely offer a political defence of El-Rufai.

He spoke from his own experience as a senior military commander.

According to Ali-Keffi, El-Rufai never instructed him to stop military operations against criminal elements in Kaduna. He said the military conducted clearance operations and that the Kaduna State Government, through officials including Samuel Aruwan, provided intelligence to military commanders.

He specifically rejected the suggestion that El-Rufai prevented military action against criminals.

He also raised a question that deserves serious public attention:

If a governor was deliberately enabling the killing of citizens while military operations were ongoing, where were the military and intelligence agencies?

That is not a question that can simply be dismissed.

A state governor does not command the Nigerian Army.

The military has its own operational and intelligence structures.

And Ali-Keffi has pointed out that Southern Kaduna fell largely within the operational structure of 3 Division and Operation Safe Haven rather than his own 1 Division.

Therefore, if Musa is alleging a deliberate state-sponsored campaign of killing, the inquiry cannot end with El-Rufai.

It inevitably raises questions about the security agencies that had operational responsibility at the time.

AND THIS BRINGS US TO GENERAL MUSA

Perhaps this is the most difficult question to ignore.

General Christopher Musa himself hails from Zangon Kataf, Southern Kaduna. His official military profile identifies his state of origin and local government as Kaduna State and Zangon Kataf.

Nobody should therefore dismiss the possibility of a deep personal and emotional connection to the region.

But Musa is also a professional soldier who served for more than three decades.

He was Theatre Commander of Operation Hadin Kai, later Commander of the Nigerian Army Infantry Corps and subsequently Chief of Defence Staff before becoming Minister of Defence.

That professional history makes another question legitimate.

If General Musa possessed credible evidence that a sitting governor was deliberately planning the killing of citizens, what did he do with that information while he was in uniform?

When did he first become aware of it?

Who did he report it to?

Was the information contained in military intelligence?

Was it presented to the President?

Was it presented to the National Security Adviser?

Was it communicated to the intelligence agencies?

Was an investigation ordered?

Was any report produced?

If he reported it and the authorities ignored it, Nigerians deserve to know.

And if he did not report it, Nigerians are entitled to ask why.

This is not an assertion that Musa necessarily possessed such evidence while in service.

It is a question arising naturally from the seriousness of the allegation he has now made.

When a former military commander and current Defence Minister tells Nigerians that a former governor deliberately planned the killing of citizens, the public is entitled to ask what the security establishment knew, when it knew it and what action was taken.

THEN THERE IS THE MUSLIM-MUSLIM TICKET QUESTION

There is another dimension that should not be ignored.

Some may wonder whether part of Musa’s objection to El-Rufai concerns his decision to run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in Kaduna.

El-Rufai selected Hadiza Balarabe, a Muslim from Southern Kaduna, as his running mate in 2019 and retained her in 2023.

He argued that the decision was an attempt to remove religion and ethnicity from the political equation in a state that had become deeply religiously and ethnically polarised.

Whether that political strategy was right or wrong is open to debate.

But if Musa’s argument is that a Muslim-Muslim political arrangement is inherently divisive, then another question naturally follows.

General Musa currently serves as Defence Minister under President Bola Tinubu, whose 2023 presidential ticket with Kashim Shettima was also Muslim-Muslim.

So the principle needs to be clearly defined.

If Muslim-Muslim tickets are inherently dangerous, why is the federal arrangement acceptable?

If they are not inherently dangerous, then what precisely did El-Rufai do beyond the composition of his ticket that amounted to religious division?

That distinction matters.

EVEN MUSA’S DESCRIPTION OF EL-RUFAI IS REVEALING

Perhaps the most revealing part of the interview came when Musa was asked whether Southern Kaduna regarded El-Rufai as an enemy.

His answer was no.

He described the former governor as “misguided.”

That is significant.

Because even while making the extraordinary allegation that El-Rufai deliberately planned the killing of Southern Kaduna people, Musa stopped short of describing him as an enemy.

He also framed his intervention as that of a Nigerian rather than an APC partisan, arguing that anyone who uses religion, tribe or creed to divide the country should not be in government.

That is a political argument.

It may be sincerely held.

But it makes it even more important to distinguish between political judgment and factual allegation.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT REHABILITATING EL-RUFAI

Let me be clear.

There are many aspects of Nasir El-Rufai’s eight years in Kaduna that deserve scrutiny.

His style of governance was often combative.

His demolitions generated enormous controversy.

His administration presided over years of terrible violence, particularly in parts of Southern Kaduna.

His policies and decisions should be examined.

His administration should be held accountable where evidence establishes wrongdoing.

And if there is evidence that he knowingly facilitated criminal violence, he should answer for it.

But none of these facts gives anyone licence to transform every criticism of his administration into an allegation that he deliberately planned the killing of Southern Kaduna people.

That is a grave criminal allegation.

It cannot be established simply because killings occurred while he was governor.

It cannot be established simply because his administration paid compensation.

It cannot be established simply because he had political disagreements with Southern Kaduna leaders.

And it certainly cannot be established by rewriting Kaduna’s history as though its conflicts began when El-Rufai entered Government House in 2015.

KADUNA HAS A MEMORY

That is what makes this controversy so delicate.

Kaduna has carried these wounds for generations.

Kafanchan.

Zangon Kataf.

The Sharia crisis.

The violence of the early 2000s.

The 2011 post-election bloodletting.

The subsequent farmer-herder conflicts.

The rise of banditry and other forms of criminal violence.

There are commissions, judicial inquiries, government white papers, peace agreements and academic studies stretching across decades.

This is not a crisis that one man invented.

And precisely because Kaduna’s history is so combustible, those who occupy positions of authority have an even greater responsibility to speak with precision.

Words from ordinary politicians may be dismissed as political rhetoric.

Words from a Defence Minister cannot be treated so casually.

GENERAL MUSA, NIGERIANS ARE LISTENING

So, General Musa, Nigerians are listening.

If you have evidence that Nasir El-Rufai deliberately planned the killing of Southern Kaduna people, produce it.

If you have evidence that he paid active bandits, identify them.

Identify the payments.

Identify when they were made.

Identify how they were made.

Explain why they were made.

If you are referring to the compensation publicly acknowledged by El-Rufai and associated with the peace process following the 2011 violence, then explain why that exercise should now be characterised as payment to bandits—particularly when General Agwai himself said compensation should extend to all aggrieved parties.

And if you knew of these alleged actions while serving in the military, Nigerians are entitled to ask what you did with the information.

This is not about protecting El-Rufai.

It is not about attacking Musa.

It is about something more fundamental:

The truth.

A Defence Minister alleging that a former governor deliberately planned the killing of citizens is far too serious to become another social-media talking point or partisan political exchange.

If the allegation is true, Nigerians deserve justice.

If it is false or unsupported, Nigerians deserve to know that too.

Kaduna has suffered enough from narratives built on selective memory, political convenience and competing versions of history.

What Kaduna—and Nigeria—needs now is not another round of accusations.

It needs evidence.

It needs accountability.

And above all, it needs the whole truth.

— Solomon Dalung, Esq.