He made a speech at the protest rally on Chokan Valikhanov Square in December 1996, and in January 1997, Nurkadilov wrote an open letter to President Nursultan Nazarbayev with sharp criticism of his policies.

Having served as akim of the region from 1997 to 2001, Nurkadilov became most famous for his project to build an international airport north of Kapchagay and a propaganda campaign to collect gold items from the population of rural areas in a kind of “homeland fund”.

Despite the fact that Nurkadilov demonstratively, in front of the television cameras, handed over his and his wife's gold jewelry, to the famous singer Makpal Zhunusova, nevertheless the public impression of this action and the reaction to it in the political and media community was so negative that the campaign was very promptly terminated.

Among the many acutely critical passages expressed in it, it was possible to highlight those of them, the material for which was taken by Nurkadilov from his spheres of activity in the leadership of the Almaty City Hall in the early 1990s and the Emergency Situations Agency for the three previous years.

It was about the privatization of suburban sanatoriums and rest homes of the former Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR, and then the buildings of ministries and republican departments relocated to Astana, about the fate of the Piedmont apple orchards of the Almaty airport, about the development of mountain slopes and gorges with mansions that damage the environment and dangerous for their inhabitants themselves in case of natural disasters.

In connection with the presidential elections, many observers expected Nurkadilov to nominate his candidacy for the presidency, which the politician expressed his intention in that very sensational statement of 11 March 2004.