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Yes, Nigerian governor El-Rufai promised to send son to public school – and did

Did Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state in northwest Nigeria, promise to send his son to a public primary school when the child turned six?

That’s the claim in a screenshot shared on Facebook – and tagged as possibly false by the social network’s fact-checking system.

El-Rufai has governed Kaduna since October 2015. He was previously director general of the country’s bureau of public enterprises

The screenshot seems to be of a post from the governor’s own Facebook page, from 24 December 2017. It shows the governor with three young children.

The text reads: “My son, Abubakar Sadiq is 4 years old now. In the next 2 years when he is 6, whether or not I’m the Governor of Kaduna State, I will enroll him in a public primary school and I urge other public officials in Kaduna, to do the same.”



El-Rufai did make promise, kept it in 2019


A search of the governor’s verified Facebook page shows that the post is real. El-Rufai published it on 24 December 2017. He added five photos of himself, in what appears to be a conference room, with four small children. 

On 23 September 2019, the official Twitter account of the governor of Kaduna, @GovKaduna, tweeted that El-Rufai’s son Abubakar Sadiq El-Rufai had been enrolled as a pupil at Kaduna Capital School. 

The tweet thread included photos of the boy in his school uniform, with his parents. 

The Facebook post is correct: the governor did make the promise. And he fulfilled it. Naledi Mashishi




 

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