El-Rufai, Sani rift thickens as gov files N2bn suit against the senator for calling him a drunk

The rift between Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai and Senator Shehu Sani, who represents Kaduna Central at the Senate, appears to have deepened with the governor’s suit seeking N2 billion damages against the lawmaker over alleged defamation of character.

In the suit the governor filed before the state High Court on Friday, he prayed for compensation for the injury he supposedly suffered following “the malicious statements” made by Senator Sani through the mass media.

According to the governor, the senator through the statement humiliated him and defamed his integrity by allegedly dubbing him a drunk, loose cannon and an embarrassment to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Governor El-Rufai, among other reliefs, is asking the court to declare that the derogatory remarks made against him by Senator Sani were totally not true and that they were injurious to his person in the eyes of the public.

Counsel to the governor, Abdul Hakeem Mustapha (SAN), who spoke to newsmen at the court premise on Friday argued that each of the four actions attracts the sum of N500 million each.

He debunked the notion that as a governor that El-Rufai lacks the constitutional right to sue any citizen.

READ ALSO: Tinubu accuses Oyegun of sabotage, heightening fears of deeper crisis in APC

The rift between the governor and the senator has remained one of the hard nuts national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, and his led reconciliation team will have to crack in their efforts to reconcile aggrieved members of the party as President Muhammadu Buhari assigned them to do.

Only days ago, El-Rufai’s government of Kaduna State, demolished the house of another senator from the state, Suleiman Hunkuyi, two days after the senator’s faction of the party announced the suspension of the governor for six months.

 

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