The Accidental Public Servant: El-Rufai As The Grand Inquisitor (2)

By Valerian Agbaw-Ebai

Just how deep El-Rufai’s frustrations run can also be seen in his utterly mercantilist attitude to politics and his cavalier indifference to corruption. Indeed, despite the vaunted public denials, El-Rufai was well aware that Baba wanted to hang on to power through a rapacious devaluation of internal democracy within the PDP, whose leaders were being bribed into submission. Instead of standing up to Obasanjo as principles would have dictated, he decided to play the game.

Hear El-Rufai: “Andy Uba asked me to send an aide to collect a message from the President for FCT’s legislators. My security details went to Andy’s house along Ibrahim Taiwo Road to collect two aluminum brief cases containing N50 million each for delivery to the two members of the House of Representatives representing the FCT – Hon Philip Aduda and Sidi Ali. Senator Isa Maina representing the FCT was one of the few well-known Third term supporters and reportedly collected his own ‘message’ directly. I later gathered (from who?) that the messages were sent through me ‘to test my loyalty’. I advised my security details to directly contact the two representatives and deliver the messages…”

After the National Assembly thwarted the third term agenda, El-Rufai tries to justify the sermon of some PDP leaders about the principle of fairness, justice and rule of law at the NEC meeting of May 18th 2006, summoned by OBJ to lick his wounds. Sadly, rather than showcase a semblance of admiration and praise for those who stuck their guns and upheld the Nigerian constitution on presidential term limits, El-Rufai displayed only contempt and absolute disregard for decency and indeed rule of law.

When El-Rufai says Obasanjo blackmailed him and Ribadu to Yar’Adua as “loose cannons” that are difficult to control, he exposed the depth of his bitterness against Obasanjo and also his own character flaws as he said he never bothered about it because he learnt from sources that Yar’Adua did not take Obasanjo seriously. Surely, Obasanjo has his faults, most of which he wears visibly on his cuff-links, but it is curious that El-Rufai should place his faith in a man whom he implied was Machiavelli incarnate; a schemer and manipulator whose authoritarian bent and presidential meddlesomeness was evinced to heat up the polity and disrupt the PDP and consequently slide the country into troubled waters.

“Obasanjo relied on multiple, often conflicting sources of information and then using the law of averages to aggregate the truth. For instance, he encouraged the formation of a group of five of us to advise him on ‘northern thinking’ on the Third Term under the chairmanship of Lawal Batagarawa with Adamu Maina Waziri, Mustapha Bello, Aliyu Modibo and I. We met weekly at Lawal’s house at Mabushi Ministers’ Quarters. Another ‘national group’ of ten persons also met every Wednesday in the villa with him to discuss ‘ongoing political reforms’ issues. Obasanjo enjoyed running these conspiracy cells from which he knew what everyone was doing and everyone else knew only a part of the whole story. He had similar cells headed by Tony Anenih, Senator Mantu, Governors Segun Agagu and Abdullahi Adamu and many other party apparatchiks and Federal Government officials.”

El-Rufai’s capacity to judge human character is erratic. By imputation, Obasanjo was the best national leader only when he served El-Rufai’s interests. Once Obasanjo ceased to serve El-Rufai’s interests, OBJ became, in El-Rufai’s views, “disgusting” and a counterfeit born-again Christian who consistently puts “his personal interest before that of the nation”. El-Rufai complained that Atiku “actively undermined me and accused me of inappropriate behavior simply to get contracts for his friends.” Would any man ever satisfy El-Rufai? Not by the way he wrote angrily against anyone he didn’t like.

If El-Rufai were as forthright as he presented himself in The Accidental Public Servant, he should have taken Nigerians behind the scene into the machinations that culminated in the widespread rigging of the 2007 elections that brought Yar’Adua to power. Besides, given the ample space El-Rufai dedicated to Abuja, he should have taken personal responsibility for the manner of land allocations in the nation’s capital which was enmeshed in corrupt practices under his watch. Under the guise of restoring the Abuja Master Plan, many individuals had their allocations transferred illegally to other persons without their knowledge or consent. Others had their original allocations arbitrarily withdrawn, and less attractive locations offered in lieu, to mollify them. Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) were issued to more than one person for the same property. The racketeering and corruption in the Abuja land administration process under El-Rufai fully qualifies for a formal inquiry to hold him accountable.

As the chief privatization Czar in the BPE, El-Rufai failed to tell Nigerians about the unsuccessful attempts by the Federal Government to privatize or liquidate the Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL). This indeed is worrisome. El-Rufai’s methods of interpretation and his penchant for street talk and callous gossip is remarkably amazing; which leaves the reader with several unanswered questions. Listen to him: “What I learnt while in exile and this was subsequently confirmed from sources within the Yar’Adua inner circle was that had I returned in October 2008 when the EFCC declared me wanted, there was a plan hatched in the NSA’s office to inject me with cultures of HIV and Hepatitis viruses while in detention. That would accelerate and ensure my death through natural causes well before the elections of 2011 which Yar’Adua’s marabouts had assured him that I was going to contest against him.”

This begs the question: why does El-Rufai insist on boring holes in the boat in which he himself is also a passenger? And why can’t he just state the facts straightforwardly without their being exaggerated, aggrandized, altered, fiddled with, dressed up, falsified, and, in short, El-Rufai-ized? Does El-Rufai think he was so much of a threat to Yar’Adua that the president could have been so daft as to contemplate eliminating him by injecting him with HIV and Hepatitis? Anyone with the remotest knowledge of medicine will dismiss such outrageous claims by El-Rufai as laughable.

On taking office, ministers swear to an oath that forbids the conversion of official duties to personal advantage. Yet, many routinely award juicy contracts to themselves through proxies, and relatives and friends. That the Obasanjo and Yar’Adua administrations did not charge El-Rufai for such an abuse of office is a reflection of the kid-gloves with which corruption is treated in Nigeria. It was not because El-Rufai is “Mr. Clean” as he portrays in his book. El-Rufai is a very rich man. Personal character and staying within the bounds of fair and just remuneration sensitive to prevailing socio-economic conditions is a mark of integrity, which is in serious deficit in our governments.

El-Rufai likes flaunting his Harvard credentials. Even the title of the book has a Harvard connection – the interview he had for the 50th anniversary of the Harvard Kennedy School Mason programme. After bad-mouthing OBJ, he writes: “…I left public service as a well-known Minister and loyalist of President Olusegun Obasanjo and since 2007, I have gone through a roller coaster period of surviving attacks on my person and family, sustained smear campaigns, death threats, persecution at home and abroad through withdrawal of my Nigerian citizenship, malicious prosecution and involuntary exile…”

This hypocrisy by one of “Yesterday’s men” (sic Reuben Abati) stinks to the high heavens. El-Rufai should consult his class notes at the Harvard Kennedy School; specifically the courses on Leadership by Ronald Heifetz. He should stop being a crying baby and understand as Heifetz taught him that leadership is a very perilous enterprise. Since El-Rufai wants to be politically relevant in every Nigerian equation, he MUST learn how to stay alive to be in the game. El-Rufai doesn’t need an authority position in Nigeria to lead; he can lead from the back; that is the hallmark of true leadership. Only the gullible would read El-Rufai’s book and conclude that the man was or is the patron saint of righteousness in Nigeria.

 •This is a review of Nasir El-Rufai’s book The Accidental Public Servant by Agbaw-Ebai who is based in the USA. E-mail: [email protected]