The Kaduna State House of Assembly has threatened to sue former Governor Nasir El-Rufai for allegedly referring to its members as “stark illiterates.”
Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Henry Marah, condemned the remarks on Tuesday, describing them as defamatory.
“I wish to remind the former Governor that all the Honorable Members of the Assembly have met the constitutional requirement to contest and win their various elections, as enshrined in Section 106 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended),” Marah stated.
The controversy erupted following El-Rufai’s comments on a Freedom Radio discussion program on Monday, where he also questioned the assembly’s authority to investigate his administration.
Marah, however, insisted that the lawmakers were acting within their constitutional rights, citing Sections 128 and 129 of the 1999 Constitution, which empower state assemblies to conduct investigations.
He dismissed El-Rufai’s claim that an external party drafted the ad-hoc committee report that indicted his administration, stating that all findings were independently conducted and remain in the public domain.
The assembly also refuted El-Rufai’s assertion that Speaker Yusuf Dahiru unilaterally dismissed the former Executive Chairman of the Kaduna Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS), Abubakar Zaid.
