The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  but you can only succeed under certain conditions. Specifically, we need you to come home when you

  are financially independent and can stomach the pay cut that you will face when entering public

  service. You should make no mistake about it – you must come home at some point. We cannot

  improve as a nation without attracting our best and brightest human resources to the public sector. As

  things stand currently, we have surrendered the bulk of our political space to the dishonourable, the

  incompetent and worse, to the criminally-minded. This is the basic problem of Nigeria. The brightest

  Nigerians are either abroad, or at home in academia, in the military or the private sector - particularly

  in the telecommunications, oil and gas or financial services industries. This is an undeniable fact; the

  dregs of our society dominate the politics and have created a negative image that makes talented

  people spurn helping the country. So to those in the Diaspora who have achieved financial

  independence through merit and hard work, I say this: good for you, earn what you deserve which

  appears impossible to earn at home. Nonetheless, unless at some point you make the rational decision

  to come back and get your hands dirty with politics or public service, Nigeria will never work in our

  lifetimes.

  This book is also an appeal to persons that have held public office to document their experiences and

  tell their sides of the story. I have made such appeals repeatedly to two persons in particular -

  Mallam Adamu Ciroma and Professor Jerry Gana. These exceptional individuals have served in three

  or four different administrations. Their public service record and personal stories would have helped

  first timers like me when sworn in as a Minister of the Government of the Federation on July 16,

  2003. Alas, they had not, and still have not. While continuing to nag them to write, I hope this story

  will nudge them (and others) a little in the direction of documenting their rich and varied experiences.

  Another prominent Nigerian whose grass to grace story, complete with gubernatorial, ministerial, and

  presidential experiences, plus field experience in civil war, needs telling is General Muhammadu

  Buhari. His life story, snippets of which he has shared with me and Pastor Tunde Bakare at various

  points will paint the picture of a nation whose leaders at one time, professed, pursued and practised

  social justice. How we got to where we now are as a country will be apparent from Buhari's memoir,

  and I am gratified that our collective nudging has finally got him working on one.

  Finally, I am writing this book to put on record my version of events, in my voice and in my own

  hand. Whether you are already familiar with the broad outlines of my story, or you are hearing my

  name for the first time, please read this with the following facts in mind: in the intervening two years

  between the time Umaru Yar’Adua emerged as the president of Nigeria and the onset of writing this

  book, I have suffered a lot of harassment. My house in Abuja has been invaded once by security

  agencies with my family imprisoned for hours. [1] Warrants have been obtained thrice to search my

  house for suspected “subversive materials.” [2] I have been serially investigated by various

  committees of the National Assembly[3] and by virtually every regulatory and law enforcement

  agency in Nigeria.[4] I have been accused of phantom crimes and declared a wanted man by the

  Yar’Adua administration with empty but media-grabbing threats of arrest by the Interpol, [5]

  extradition[6] and so on. Yet the same government ordered all Nigerian diplomatic missions not to

  renew my passport when I completed my studies and announced plans to return home!

  In the face of politically motivated persecution of my person, friends and family, I have protested and

  maintained my innocence of all the allegations and consistently issued statements to explain my own

  side of the story. I have filed several lawsuits against the federal government and its agencies, [7]

  companies and individuals[8] that have attempted to impugn my integrity and mounted a vigorous

  defence against the single criminal case the Nigerian government has launched against me. [9] These

  are all ongoing developments and remain open questions as I write this story. At my age and in my

  political circumstance, writing a book that attempts to open the black box of politics and governance

  in Nigeria is a very risky endeavour. Deciding what experiences to reveal and what to leave out,

  exposing oneself to risks of being accused of having an agenda even when there is none, and avoiding

  early and premature judgments continue to be issues at every point of writing. There is also the

  greater risk of what I have written being used as evidence of some undesirable tendency of mine.

  My many friends and family members played important roles in guiding me in my attempts to resolve

  some of these conflicts. I take solace in this regard in the words of Nelson Mandela to the effect that

  only a fool refuses to change his mind when confronted with new facts and better information. My life

  is still evolving, and I am still learning, so no views expressed here are as sacrosanct as a religious

  text. I am open to change as I learn more. I am still grateful to my friends for helping me to understand

  better some of these tricky matters.

  My life and personal history are of little interest except insofar as certain events and experiences

  have shaped my preparation for public service. My years in government – about nine in all, and the

  aftermath – are too short to present more than a snapshot of the challenges of being in public service

  and politics in a developing country like Nigeria. So this is neither a full-scale autobiography nor a

  memoir because I think it is premature at my age, and I have achieved too little to write either an

  autobiography or a memoir. This is simply a story of my years in government and after; the

  autobiographical style and context just lay the foundation for why I think the way I think and why I

  took the actions I took when I was in public service.

  What I found in my public service career was sobering, to say the least. I would not say my

  experiences made me more hopeful, or more cynical; and while I found some aspects of public

  service a pleasant surprise, there were certainly others that I consider a big disappointment. For

  instance, the aftermath of my years in government, during which I experienced betrayal by some

  friends and relations, the concoction of falsehoods against me and my loyal friends, the smear and

  persecution, and the widespread suspicion that once a minister even for a day, one must have looted

  public funds are both typical and painful experiences, but part of the price one pays in order to make

  one’s nation function even slightly better. Ultimately, the experience is hardly different from the

  normal pattern in human life: the dissonance between what one anticipates and what one actually

  finds – no matter how much one studies something, reads about it, thinks about it, hears about it - is no

  substitute for one to actually do and experience it directly. This is the crux of the story I intend to

  narrate here.

  In narrating this story, I have tried my best to be accurate and factual, and in describing persons and

  events with minimal judgment and use of adjectives. I have just one motive in mind - to tell the story

  of my public service years to prepare the younger
generation for the sorts of challenges they may face.

  As a human being, I am bound to have erred or recollected events differently. I apologize in advance

  to those that would beg to differ with my version of events, and suggest they should write theirs. That

  is the only way more and more people would understand our government and governance, for the

  better, too.

  Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai

  Abuja, November, 2012

  Prologue:

  The Beginning of the End

  “No third term – no Nigeria.”

  – President Olusegun Obasanjo, February 2006

  There it was – confirmation from the man himself of what I, not to mention the rest of the country, had

  suspected for months. The words hung in the night time air as I contemplated how to respond. I knew

  immediately what I was thinking though. I was thinking that he was wrong and that this sort of

  manoeuvring was not at all what I signed up for when I first agreed to join the Obasanjo

  Administration in 1999. Hearing President Obasanjo saying these words did not surprise me as much

  as it disappointed me. For it was obvious to anyone who was even remotely paying attention at that

  point in early 2006, that there was some sort of effort underway to secure him a third presidential

  term. What had up until that point remained elusive was any clear confirmation that the man himself

  had thought about it, wanted it, or was even aware of it. There, that evening, in the lush gardens

  outside the main residence but within the sprawling estate known as the Presidential Villa, with a

  single phrase, the president had emerged from behind the shadows of plausible deniability.

  I do not remember where or when I first became aware of the actual phrase, ‘plausible deniability’,

  but the gist of it, that some powerful person might arrange for some act to be undertaken on their

  behalf via a third party in order to avoid any connection with the said act, had by 2006 become an

  Obasanjo trademark. With the benefit of hindsight and the roller coaster ride that was my relationship

  with the former president, it is difficult for me to pinpoint exactly when things began to go wrong, but

  I think it was in early 2005 when we on the economic reform team began to hear rumours of a plan for

  a third presidential term. As was usual for me, after hearing various versions of it a couple of times, I

  spoke about it with my closest working colleagues at the time, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-

  Iweala, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman Nuhu Ribadu and Special

  Assistant to the President on Budget Monitoring Oby Ezekwesili. They said they were hearing similar

  rumours. Abuja is a city of rumours, so we let it pass. However, by February 2005, when the list of

  all government nominees to the National Political Reform Conference was made public, we thought

  that we should ask the President to confirm or deny the rumours. So as is usual with me, I went to

  President Obasanjo for the second time in two weeks to raise the subject.

  “Mr. President we have been hearing stories about this tenure extension. Is it something in

  contemplation?” I asked him. His first response I thought odd, but it was only just the beginning.

  “Look at me very well, Minister,” he said. “Do you think I am looking for a job? I came out

  of prison, I was on my farm, I was begged to come and do this job. Now that we are about to finish

  this job, do you honestly think I would be looking for another job?”

  “Well, are you looking for another job, Mr. President?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “I am looking forward to May 29, 2007, I will go back to my farm

  and that is it.”

  “So there is no plan for any constitutional amendment on term limits, Mr. President?”

  “Certainly not.”

  I left the president’s office with a sense of relief after this conversation. I believed him because he

  was quite definite about it. In fact, he was a little bit irritated about my questions. To be fair to

  President Obasanjo, up until what came to be known to us as the ‘Third Term’ debacle, he was a man

  of his words that did not entertain rumours and gossip about such serious national issues. If one said

  something accusatory or unfair about another official to Obasanjo, it was typical of him to call the

  person immediately, put one and the person on speaker phone and demand that one repeat what one

  just said so that the person would have a chance to defend his honour! With that likelihood, one learnt

  never to tell Obasanjo something that one could not defend easily with facts and figures in the

  possible presence of the persons mentioned in the ‘rumour’.

  The rumours continued throughout most of 2005. Because a few of us in the economic reform team –

  Ngozi, Oby, Nuhu, and I – were considered very close to Obasanjo, many assumed us to be in the

  know about it. We were visibly implementing an economic reform programme that was on track: the

  Nigerian economy was booming, accumulating huge foreign reserves and a big savings account from

  excess oil revenues. However, for many outside our inner circle, these achievements were the

  justification for the third term project.

  Indeed, I had a brief chat with a chieftain of one of the opposition political parties, the ANPP, while

  waiting for a flight from Lagos to Abuja in October 2010 during which he blamed the economic team

  for the failed third term attempt. He heard that we authored a memo to Obasanjo making a case for

  tenure elongation. Others take speeches Chukwuma Soludo and I made at the Murtala Mohammed

  Memorial Lecture in February 2007 about the Asian Tigers ‘political continuity’ as basis of

  attributing ideas of many years of PDP rule to us and other economic team members. All of these are

  innocent misrepresentations and completely untrue as far as I know.

  The truth of the matter was that the third term project was believed by many of us in the

  administration, to have been initiated by Lagos businessmen who were looking to keep the economy

  undisturbed by a transfer of power. Since this economic boom all happened on Obasanjo’s watch,

  according to the assumption, these Lagos businessmen wanted Obasanjo to have an extra four years. It

  was also around that time that some of our seminal macroeconomic achievements were realized.

  Among them, we got our $30 billion of Paris Club debt written off, and with the money saved

  government contracted to build seven new power stations using gas in the Niger Delta and South-

  West, and a brand new, modern national railway system. We also streamlined the management of the

  seaports for private sector use so that it would be easier to import and export. Many huge steps were

  being taken all in the same year and I think the business community saw that as a clear signal that if

  we fixed power and transportation, the biggest bottlenecks to business in Nigeria would be removed.

  Who these Lagos businessmen were that were behind this idea remained unconfirmed, but several

  names were mentioned eventually and these repeatedly made the rounds in many circles in Abuja.

  Festus Odimegwu, the then chief executive officer of Nigerian Breweries, and Ndi Okereke Onyiuke,

  the head of the Stock Exchange, were alleged to have started it. They were reportedly supported by

  Nigeria's foremost industrialist and richest man Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu of the United Bank for

  Africa, Cecilia Ibru of Oceanic Bank and Jim Ovia of Zenith Bank.
The logic behind the rumours is

  that the companies these people represented benefited on an unprecedented scale under our tenure and

  a third Obasanjo term surely would have enabled them to consolidate their gains and live happily

  ever after! Whether these rumours were true or not, fair or unfair, the presumption that these

  individuals and organizations benefited from the Obasanjo administration in the past, and stood to

  benefit if it remained in office, made virtually everyone in government declare them the prime movers

  of the tenure extension plan. I sounded out a few of them that I was in touch with and all denied

  knowledge of any such plot - just like Obasanjo!

  The rumours, of course, increased. Unsatisfied, I decided to try again, and this time I approached

  Obasanjo’s Chief of Staff, General Abdullahi Mohammed, who was also a mentor of sorts and had

  been close to Obasanjo for more than 40 years and asked him what he knew. His response was that he

  had certainly heard the rumours, had asked Obasanjo the same question and Obasanjo had denied

  everything. To me, this was very interesting, because if Obasanjo denied the existence of the third

  term project to his chief of staff it meant that either Obasanjo was not behind the project or the chief

  of staff was not trusted enough. The prospect of the chief of staff lying was, in my view, not a

  possibility – he was one of the few people I believed had integrity in public service in Nigeria at that

  time (and up till the time I am writing this). If he had known of such an effort, he would have admitted

  to me, but request that I should not share the knowledge with anyone. So I decided to believe

  Obasanjo was not behind the tenure elongation idea and that this was a private initiative of other

  politicians and businessmen trying to feather their nests.

  Yet the rumours persisted. So early in September 2005, I went back to Obasanjo again and he had the