The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  Wimpey and my last few weeks of national youth service turned out to be in animated suspension,

  during which I was active in my private consulting work. I still got my certificate of service without

  any problem, but got no commendations.

  I was 21 at the time and I had developed this activist mentality that certain sort of behaviour is wrong

  and must be challenged. Now that I am older, I understand clearly what they were doing and part of

  the money was going to government officials, maybe some of it went to the consultants, but it was a

  whole structure of monthly payoffs. I did not know it then because no one taught us that in our quantity

  surveying curriculum, and I did not believe that people did that kind of stuff. Once I started practising

  as a QS consultant and started getting offers from people, I then fully realized what was going on with

  Wimpey and I was just too naïve at the time to understand it. Little did I know, the scheme I

  uncovered there was only the first of many that I would encounter both while working in the private

  sector and years later in public service – on a grander scale.

  Chapter Two

  The Calm Before the Storm

  “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

  “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

  ― Aristotle

  When I returned to Kaduna in August 1981, I had three job offers. One was to work for the French

  construction giant, Fougerolle on another hydroelectric dam project, the Jebba Dam; another was with

  a Kano-based professional quantity surveying firm that I had interned with while in university, then

  known as Murt-Lamy Associates; and the third was with the Kaduna-based, NNDC[23] affiliate, the

  New Nigeria Construction Company Ltd. Since Sani Maikudi and I were then planning to establish a

  construction company to build homes, factories and roads and such, I decided to take the job with the

  New Nigeria Construction Company and was assigned to a teaching hospital project site in nearby

  Zaria. In this job, I learned the risks of being involved in an office romance. The job of Site Quantity

  Surveyor with the New Nigeria Construction Company ended after six months due to a conflict with

  the financial controller of the company involving a mutual romantic interest. Essentially, we were

  both dating his secretary at the same time and for a while I was the only one in the company who did

  not know that. As a more senior officer he was in a position to target me, make my life miserable in

  several ways and he did. After six months of employment, I resigned and returned to Kaduna and

  began thinking of impromptu ways to start our own business.

  While waiting to get the business started, I worked for various firms in an individual consultant

  capacity that enabled me visit the future capital, Abuja, for the very first time. We went on a project

  visit while I was on the team working with a planning consulting firm called Environment Seven from

  Chicago, USA. The firm came to Nigeria to prepare a master plan for one of the satellite towns of

  Abuja, a new town called Karu, in association with a Nigerian subsidiary, Environment Seven (E7)

  Nigeria Ltd., led by an architect and ABU alumnus, Ibrahim Mahmood. Others I met and worked with

  at the time include architects Greg Icha, Ahmed Dantata (deceased), and a town planner, Dr.

  Mohammed Sani Abdu – developing friendships that endured even after we all went our separate

  professional ways.

  At that time, Abuja was basically just savannah, a few huts and trees here and there and nothing else.

  The airport had just been constructed and the express-road had been built from the airport to the city,

  and nothing more. The Hilton hotel was then under construction, the ‘Shagari’ presidential complex

  was being built, but nothing more. So we took the old Keffi Road, through what is now Millennium

  Park, and went to Karu and looked around with the American team and their Nigerian counterparts

  that were working on the master plan for the new town.

  This was in 1982, six years after the decision was made to move the capital from Lagos to Abuja

  within a 25 year timeframe. Honestly, my first impression upon finally seeing the city site was that

  Abuja was a dream that would never happen in my lifetime, and that it was impossible for this jungle,

  this bush, to ever be the capital of Nigeria in the next 25 years. Fifty was the more likely scenario in

  my estimation. Even as late as in 1988, when my partners and I debated whether we should move the

  headquarters of our consulting business from Kaduna to Abuja, the pessimism about Abuja remained.

  Three out of four of us voted against relocating to Abuja because we did not believe it would ever

  turn out to be what it became by the mid-1990s. When I bought my first house that year, I had the

  option to buy or build in Abuja and I decided in favour of Kaduna, which was clearly, with the

  benefit of hindsight, perhaps the worst investment decision I ever made. If I had built that same house

  in Abuja, I could sell it today for over a billion naira, the equivalent of nearly ten million dollars. In

  Kaduna, I could not get more than a couple of hundred million naira or the equivalent of one or two

  million dollars today. The way Abuja grew and became a viable capital is nothing short of

  miraculous, really. It is one of the decisions that former President Ibrahim Babangida deserves all

  credit for taking, because his administration did it nearly single-handedly. He is without a doubt, not

  only largely responsible for building the future city’s core infrastructure but also for accelerating

  Abuja’s growth when he relocated the seat of government from Lagos in December 1991.

  In any event, my private sector experience exposed me to many people very early in my life, so I

  gained a lot of experience in dealing with people. I learned to be more patient because as a

  construction consultant I had to be not only professional, but courteous to prospective clients to get

  appointed as consultant to certain projects. I registered a quantity surveying consulting firm in 1982

  and started operating out of the bungalow which I shared with my closest friend at the time, Abba

  Bello Ingawa. Our very first income-earning job was the First Bank Sokoto Branch, which pre-

  contract functions we completed in late 1982, for a gross fee then of twelve thousand naira which was

  the equivalent of about $15,000. We then applied the proceeds to purchase our first Sharp photocopy

  machine and Olivetti electronic typewriter, and that was pretty much how we got started. Abba

  Bello’s day job was working for Conital, an Italian construction company at the time, while assisting

  me during weekends. I worked full-time for our own QS consulting firm which after several

  metamorphoses became three firms, Design Cost Associates (Project Management), El-Rufai

  &Partners (Chartered Quantity Surveyors) and Proquest Consultants (Procurement Advisory). Since

  there were just about a dozen chartered quantity surveyors in Nigeria at the time, to use the

  prestigious and more distinctive "Chartered" appellation, the firm was required by the rules of the

  RICS to carry my name as the only person so qualified. Since then, many of our staff and partners

  have acquired the qualification and I have not been involved in the firms' day-to-day operations since

  1998, but they have chosen to keep the name. So to sum up, eighteen months after graduating from

  universi
ty, and six months after completing national youth service, circumstances compelled me to be

  my own boss and a small business owner. Apart from national service, I had worked for someone

  else for all of six months, did not get to like that idea, and was forced by unplanned chain of events to

  start our own consulting business with initially dormant partners.

  The Early Days of Private Practice

  In short order, we had a lot of new business rolling in and with that, came a lot of money at a very

  young age. The first time we made our first million naira - the equivalent of more than a million

  dollars then - was around 1986, in our mid-twenties. What having money early showed me was that

  money was not particularly important to one's happiness. In the beginning we partied, bought things

  we have always wanted and gifts for relations and friends and it was fun, no doubt. During that

  period, many close friends began to change the way they interacted with us. They became more

  respectful and started deferring to me and Abba. Personally, after the initial euphoria, the deference

  got me worried and in one or two instances scared me. I began to feel increasingly isolated, lonely

  and unhappy. Suddenly, government economic policy changed that state of affairs.

  We woke up one morning to learn that the naira had lost half of its value overnight. Nigeria was going

  through an IMF-type structural adjustment programme at the time that involved devaluing the currency

  every week in an auction and within a year we were nearly broke. In 1986, we had a million dollars

  or so each to our names; by the end of 1987, we were down to almost nothing, thanks to Babangida's

  economic programme – the structural adjustment programme (appropriately called SAP), and Nigeria

  has never been the same since then, and in the view of many people, mostly not for the better. So

  when we went nearly broke, our friends reverted to the normal relationship we were accustomed to.

  They stopped being too deferential and resumed treating us like buddies.

  For me that was a huge lesson. I also realized that one did not need a lot of money to live a good life

  and that too much money can even distort the reality of one’s relationships with people. In short, it

  sounds like a cliché, but it is true: money can be the root of all evil. If a man has a lot of money and

  sees a beautiful girl he likes, and he has a nice car and looks rich, he cannot be sure if she truly likes

  him when he asks her for a date because she is likely to say yes anyway. The same applies to a rich

  madam who drives along the street and sees a young man whom she likes – you can fill in the gap! So

  with this experience, I made up my mind that based on the legitimate income from my profession and

  the blessings of God, I could live a comfortable life without having to do anything dishonest. Seeking

  for anything more, dishonestly, would only damage one's humanity and affect a person’s dignity, and

  was therefore not really worth it. This became etched in my mental architecture very early in my

  professional life.

  I have also been privileged to meet several professionals in the course of my career that assisted me

  and nurtured my innate talents. Shehu Lawal Giwa was in many ways a quantity surveying pioneer.

  He graduated at the top of his class both at Barewa College and Ahmadu Bello University, and

  established a firm in the mid-1970s that enabled many young northerners to believe they could do the

  same and not starve in the process. Though he spent all his professional life in the private sector, he

  was the quintessential public servant, who drove from Kaduna to Zaria every Sunday to teach us

  Advanced Building Quantities for many, many years. It was this example that encouraged me to do the

  same for 17 years, at various times, teaching Cost Control, Professional Practice and Procedure, as

  well as Advanced Building Quantities to final year QS undergraduate students. I became an active

  member of our local professional body, the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) and got

  elected as Assistant General Secretary, and at some point the Vice Chairman of the Professional

  Examinations Board. I was privileged again to serve alongside distinguished professionals like

  Abdulkadir Kawu, the late Chief O W E Owete and Chief Ezugo Isiadinso. They encouraged me and

  assigned responsibilities that deepened and broadened my perspectives about the QS profession,

  public service and our unity in diversity as a country. I made acquaintances and developed close

  friendships with Godson Moneke, for many years the NIQS Executive Secretary and near

  contemporaries like Segun Ajanlekoko, Felix Okereke-Onyieri and Alex Nwosisi. Working with

  these people convinced me that Nigeria's greatness is achievable if good people from every part of

  the nation come together to work as teams pulling in the same direction. I appreciate these fine people

  for their roles in contributing to the richness of my professional life. I remain grateful to God for these

  early blessings.

  Our active participation in NIQS activities encouraged others around Kaduna to join. My partner,

  Husaini Dikko was a reluctant convert, but rose to be the president of the institute and currently heads

  the professional regulatory body, the QS Registration Board of Nigeria. We established state chapters

  in virtually every state of the federation and made the examination and professional entry paths more

  transparent. We also published our Nigerian Standard Method of Measurement, and encouraged QS

  participation in engineering as well as oil and gas projects. These experiences and exposure all came

  handy later in public service.

  Marriage and Challenges of Family Life

  I met my first wife, Hadiza Isma, one pleasant August evening at Queen Amina Hall of the Ahmadu

  Bello University, Zaria, in 1976. I knew the moment I saw her that she was the girl for me, but thought

  it best to hang around and wait for the right moment to make the move. We became friends and got

  closer over time, and supported each other through our various romantic experiments until about 1983

  when we began dating for real. We got married in Kano on the 17th of August, 1985 and moved into

  our first home three months later – a rented three bedroom bungalow along Dawaki Road (now Isa

  Kaita Road) in Kaduna GRA. Shortly after the wedding, we sought to answer the question of where

  would we build our marital life together. We considered this question along with our choice of

  honeymoon destination: London.

  The first time I had visited the UK was in 1982, after I qualified as a certified quantity surveyor. I

  took the qualifying examinations of the Institute of Quantity Surveyors of the UK in 1981 during my

  national youth service year and passed. I then had to go to the UK to fill out some forms and go

  through the formalities required to be qualified and recognized as an associate of the UK Institute of

  Quantity Surveyors (AIQS). Nigerians did not need a visa then to visit the UK. You got a six-month

  entry stamp at the airport! It was a quick visit to formalize my licensing and get properly admitted into

  the Quantity Surveying profession.

  My next time back in the UK was in 1985 for our honeymoon. Hadiza had been to Europe and

  America long before me as she was from an affluent middle class family, and they were vacationing

  abroad while we were in secondary school and university. When we went for the honeymoon in

  1985, I wa
s also going to be interviewed for a job. Since we had both trained to be professionals in

  the construction industry – she as an architect and I as a quantity surveyor – we thought that given the

  economic situation Nigeria faced at the time, it might make sense to explore relocating to the UK to

  make a living there. In 1982, the Shagari civilian government declared austerity measures when oil

  prices collapsed. The elections in 1983 were a farce, and became violent with riots and post-election

  killings in Ondo State. Most Nigerians were not shocked when, on December 31st, 1983, the military

  took power once again, with Major-General Muhammadu Buhari emerging as Head of State. Buhari

  inherited a near-empty treasury and huge trade arrears accumulated during years of reckless spending.

  Cutbacks in capital spending were inevitable and the construction industry was the first to feel the

  recession. In 1984, Nigeria looked like a hopeless place to be for young construction professionals.

  The military had returned without mentioning a hand-over date, oil prices had collapsed and there

  were very few new construction projects happening anywhere. The only consolation was that the

  regime was essentially honest, imposed discipline and was intent on repaying our debts instead of

  submitting to an IMF-imposed austerity programme! As a young couple, we explored every option.

  I sent my resume to the Property Services Agency, an agency of the central government in the UK, and

  was invited to be interviewed for a job as quantity surveyor. The agency ended up offering me the

  position, with a salary of 12,000 pounds per annum. After making enquiries as to how much money

  that really was in concrete terms, after deducting taxes and basic living expenses, we both decided

  that the job was not worth the sacrifice of leaving our country. There was no point emigrating if the

  most we could save was some 200 pounds a month – at the end of one year, we would have saved

  2,400 British pounds, which was about the money we could save working hard in Nigeria over the