The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has fired back at former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai over his recent defection to the Social Democratic Party (SDP), urging him to “quit sulking, get a grip, and salvage some respectability.”

In a statement on Monday, APC National Publicity Secretary Barrister Felix Morka dismissed El-Rufai’s claim, made in a BBC Hausa interview, that the ruling party had strayed from its founding progressive ideals.

The APC accused El-Rufai of being driven by personal grievances after failing to secure a ministerial appointment in President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

“El-Rufai’s allegation of a drift from our party’s founding values exists only in his foggy imagination,” the statement read.

The party described him as “a self-interested politician, blinded by ego, driven by untamed emotion, and brimming with a vengeful desire to ‘collapse the system.’”

The APC pointed to El-Rufai’s own words in the BBC interview, where he expressed disappointment in how Tinubu’s administration treated him, suggesting that his defection was more about personal frustration than ideological differences.

“His claim that he left because the party had deviated from its founding values is a smokescreen to weaponise personal grievance garbed as principled dissent,” the party added.

The APC urged El-Rufai to engage in constructive opposition by offering alternative policies instead of resorting to “scurrilous propaganda and deliberate misinformation.”