Despite outrage and condemnation from the public, Bello El-Rufai, one of the sons of Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has refused to withdraw several derogatory comments made by him on micro-blogging site, Twitter.
“I stand by every word and enjoyed (sic) dealing with whoever came at me. The words were carefully chosen. In court, rape is key to the case. So don’t worry, all is well. Our image has always been dented to those ones. They will never like us and we are perfectly fine with it,” he said in a tweet he later deleted.
He maintained his stance despite appeal from a former Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, that he should apologise.
“@B_ELRUFAI Did I just see horrific tweets from your handle threatening gang-rape? What was that?
Why the ethnic vitriol toward Igbos? What’s that, Bello? Too tragic.
You need to not just immediately apologize for those vile tweets but get into an Anger Management program quickly,” she tweeted, before adding, “I have maintained that we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can object without being objectionable. Healthy debates and divergences that arise are important for democratic development of societies”.
Courting Trouble
The younger El-Rufai had courted public condemnation following his spat with a Twitter user, @thanos_zer, who criticised a tweet he posted about President Donald Trump of the United States of America.
“There is nothing as radioactive as an incompetent leader during a time of crisis. The United States of America is a case in point. A few states in Nigeria too,” Bello El-Rufai tweeted on Saturday.
His tweet prompted @thanos_zer to wonder what he thought about President Muhammadu Buhari, insisting Bello should rather focus on the Nigerian president.
“How about the absentee president in Nigeria?,” @thanos_zer tweeted in obvious reference to President Buhari.
“I don’t shield anyone who’s inept. I can’t say the same about you. You’re daddy’s boy and of course nobody attacks the finger that feeds them. Buhari’s ineptitude is mind-blowing. Yes I said it and you’re not going to make me disappear!,” twitter user, @thanos_zer added in response to claim by Bello El-Rufai that he must be from the South East and his state governor incompetent.
Miffed by the criticism of the Twitter user, the younger El-Rufai sent a direct message to him, saying, “Tell your mother I’m passing her to my friends tonight.” Mr El-Rufai said to his detractor, before adding an ethnic diatribe: “No Igbo sounds please!”
“Your mother is the main whore of the South-East. I can’t reply you publicly. F**k Kanu and take a picture of the Second Niger Bridge, thanks to Buhari. My mentions are mine. If a Sunday bastard makes up lies and drags my father, his mother will be games. If he doesn’t want it, he shouldn’t mention me. The crowd has never phased (sic) me…”, he added in another message.
All is fair in love and war?
Responding to a Twitter user who tagged her in the post, the governor’s wife and Bello’s mother, Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, said “Don’t @ me. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. All is fair in love and war.”
Her words generated criticism as many saw it as a justification of what her son tweeted.
Asked to clarify her position, she said, “The point I tried to make is for people not @ me. Why should they? Responding to insults on Twitter is fair. I stand by that. I had not gone through the tweets because it’s really none of my business, so didn’t know the details. He’s an adult not child, after all.”
However, in another tweet by 1:08pm, she appeared to have backtracked when she wrote, “When I posted the tweet below (referring to the first tweet), I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/ private exchanges, no matter the provocation.”
Punishable under the law
Human Rights lawyer, Hameed Jimoh, said the statement by Bello El-Rufai could be an offence under the law of the land.
“I found that the statement could be an offence under sections: 24(2), 25 (cybersquatting), 26(racist and xenophobic offences) & 27, among other necessary sections of the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc)Act, 2015. It could also be an offence under sections: 4 and 17 of the Violence Against Persons Act, 2015. The statement in my view with due respect to him, is such that the criminal laws above prohibit?,” he noted
However, the Abuja-based lawyer added that, “these laws might be affected by territorial jurisdiction because it is my legal argument that the provisions of the above laws specifically those concerned sections only relate to Abuja, FCT as crimes in this respect, are under the residual legislative list. So, there must be the need for the police to carry out necessary investigation into the matter”
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