Former FCT minister and Kaduna State governorship flagbearer of the APC, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has insisted that he has no regrets for the demolition exercise he carried out in Abuja during his tenure as minister and will repeat same in Kaduna if elected governor to restore sanity to the state.
He said he demolished the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Abuja because it was a brothel at night and was illegally occupied, stressing, “I have no regret doing so and will do same here in Kaduna for any illegal structures.”
Speaking to Nigerian journalists in Abuja, he reiterated:
“Once I am given a job and I agree to do it, I do it with all my heart and as minister of FCT, which is one of the most difficult jobs, I did my job to the best of my ability.
“I do not think that the issue is whether I was controversial or not. The issue is whether I left Abuja better than I met it. And I think most people in Abuja will say I did. That is what matters.
“Kaduna is different from Abuja in many respects. So, there is work to be done here. Not everything to be done here will be loved by the people. A lot of it will be embraced by the people but if there is a job to be done and I undertake to do it, if the people of Kaduna State elect me, it is because they want change.
“They do not want this place to be a state of bill boards and no action. They want schools to be better than what they are now; they want our health care system to cater for everybody, not the friends of the government that get sponsored to go to Egypt.
“They want agriculture to flourish and they want the state of insecurity to be addressed. Currently, these things are not being done. In the process of doing them, some people would say I am controversial”.
