Two years after he championed President Bola Tinubu’s campaign in 2023, former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai says he joined others in allowing a “bandit” to become Nigeria’s leader.

Mr El-rufai, who fell out with Mr Tinubu after his ministerial appointment nomination was blocked by the Senate, said this in Abuja on Saturday at the 60th birthday lecture of former Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State.

“Nigeria is in its biggest trouble since 1914, and that is why we are together working and conspiring to build a coalition to take Nigeria back on track because it is off track,” Mr El-Rufai said.

Calling Mr Tinubu’s administration a government of “bandits”, Mr El-Rufai said, “It has turned to this level because we have allowed bandits, not the ones in the bushes but the ones in the urban areas called the urban bandits, to take over leadership.”

The former Kaduna governor berated Mr Tinubu as an incompetent leader who only knows how to grab and snatch power.

“I believe that the problem that we have, which I think (former) Governor Babangida referred to, is that we just get incompetent people, and we hand over leadership to them. Most of them don’t really know what to do. They just know how to grab power but don’t know what to do with it,” Mr El-Rufai said.

Mr El-Rufai’s statement followed his earlier admission that he and others supported Mr Tinubu’s presidential bid despite his cocaine and certificate forgery scandals in Chicago after his defection from the ruling All Progressives Congress to the Social Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Mr Amaechi, a former minister of works, said he and other opposition politicians could seize power from the president because they are as hungry as every Nigerian.

The former governor spoke in the presence of Mr El-Rufai and other opposition politicians planning a coalition to challenge Mr Tinubu in the 2027 election.

“We are all hungry. All of us are. If you are not hungry, I am,” said Mr Amaechi. “So, for us, the opposition, if you want us to remove the man in power -Tinubu -we can remove him from this power.”

Mr Amaechi recalled how, as student unionists, he and others, regardless of their regional and religious differences, rallied massive crowds in protests against former military ruler Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari.

Mr Amaechi, a former presidential aspirant, lost his bid to Mr Tinubu during the APC primary election in 2022.