mosques and churches in Abuja. The Muslims were represented at various times by either Justice
Murtala Orire or Bashir Sambo on behalf of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam, while Bishop Ola Makinde of
the Methodist Church and Reverend William Okoye led the team representing the Christian
Association of Nigerian. In a meeting held on 19th November, 2003, we discussed the allocation of
plots for religious institutions, recovery of plots that had been wrongly converted to other land uses,
the demolition of illegal places of worship, the HIV/AIDS pandemic in FCT, and completion and
rehabilitation of the national Cathedral and Mosque respectively. Another follow-up meeting took
place on 9th December, 2003 on the same subjects. Not surprisingly, they did not think any church or
mosque building should be designated as illegal. They asked us to explain what was meant by an
‘illegal’ mosque or church.
“‘Illegal’ means no FCT agency gave the occupant the land, nobody granted approval to build.
Either of those omissions makes the building illegal,” I said.
“But these are God's buildings”
“No, they are not. Anyone can make that claim on His behalf. God put me in charge here to make
the city to work for everyone – that there should be rules and some orderliness. So please do not
mention God as justification for violating the rules and regulations. The fact is this: in my religion
(Islam) and in Christianity, we have all been enjoined to comply with rules and obey constituted
authority. The FCT ministry which I head is the constituted authority around here. If you know
anyone other than that, please tell me.”
They agreed that FCDA represented the symbol of authority in the FCT administration, so I said,
“Fine. Go and tell your members to remove those buildings within four weeks or we will remove
them without further notice.” We also agreed clear guidelines on allocation of plots for places of
worship, the pre-screening of applications first by the religious bodies, and completion of the
National Cathedral as well as the rehabilitation of the National Mosque. I briefed the president
regularly on all the discussions and suggested next steps.[54]
We always had robust discussions in our meetings with religious leaders, quoting both the Quran and
the Bible, and in the end the religious leaders agreed to support our reforms. They also agreed to
preach and propagate in support of HIV/AIDS control programmes. The support and understanding of
Bishop Peter Akinola of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Onaiyekan of the Catholic Church,
Bishop Ola Makinde of the Methodist Church, and Reverend William Okoye on the CAN side were
invaluable at all times in these regards. On the Muslim side, Justice Bashir Sambo, Justice Murtala
Orire, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu, Adamu Adamu, Sheikh Musa Mohammed, Akilu Idris, Alhaji Muhammad
Mairami and Professor Ibrahim Mukoshy were extremely helpful in resolving many issues and
supporting the FCT administration through difficult reform challenges. I will always be grateful to
them all.
Most of these illegal churches were not put up by the orthodox denominations. We found that no
Catholic, Anglican, Baptist or Methodist churches operated in this fashion, but rather it is this new
generation of pentecostal churches that in the opinion of many Nigerians are mostly ‘faith
scams,’,basically business enterprises selling salvation on this earth without paying taxes, that were
prevalent in perpetrating the illegalities. The illegal mosques were mostly attached to residences,
offices and markets, put up without approved building plans. So we began removing them. Some
mosques in particular consistently condemned me and prayed for my downfall. One or two declared
me an apostate for daring to demolish a mosque, conveniently forgetting that Prophet Muhammad
himself ordered the demolition of an illegal mosque in Madina Al-Munawwarah, some 1,400 years
earlier.
Many of the affected ‘churches’ prayed that "by God’s grace, El-Rufai will go down, El-Rufai will
lose his job, El-Rufai will die in Jesus’ name." I was there for nearly four years and we removed all
of them. Some religious leaders rose to my defence even earlier than others. I was particularly
touched when I learnt that one of Abuja’s leading churches, Family Worship Centre, led by Pastor
Sarah Omakwu, preached in defence of what we were doing in Abuja. Many of her parishioners
affected by our demolitions left the church in protest and anger, but she remained resolute and
persisted. I had not met her then, but subsequently visited her church to express gratitude for its
support. I remain grateful to Pastor Sarah for her courage and early vote of confidence, and that
coming from an influential leader of the Christian community was an important validation for our
policies.
By the time I had spent two years in the FCT, I had become this mythical character who many people
apparently believed had supernatural powers. How could all of these churches and mosques be
praying for my downfall and nothing happens? Voodoo did not work on the man, praying against him
did not seem to work either. All kinds of stories were going around that I had terminal cancer, and
even AIDS – I remember one newspaper even published a cartoon of me, allegedly sponsored by the
campaign organization of one of Obasanjo’s prospective successors to the presidency, depicting me
as being very thin and dying of AIDS. The attacks never relented, and the anger never subsided.
The Tortoise in My Office
Without a doubt the funniest rumour that went around began when I came to my office one day and
found something that looked like a small tortoise on my seat. This was supposed to be some voodoo
curse meant to scare me. I do not know how it got there; I just removed it, settled down and started
working on the files on the desk. The very next day, one Nigeria’ newspaper, the Daily Times, had a
story about how I came into my office, saw a tortoise, collapsed, and had been flown out abroad in a
coma. The Daily Times has since gone out of print, but it was the oldest newspaper in Nigeria and
this was its back page story.[55] I could not stop laughing.
When I arrived at the office the next morning, many people called inquiring about my condition.
“You’re supposed to be abroad!” they said. I assured them it is a complete lie. Just to keep things
simple I did not even want to tell them that I saw the tortoise in my office. The curious thing is that the
story was filed by the newspaper’s FCT correspondent, so I invited him to drop by.
“My friend, I am supposed to be on sick leave,” I said.
“I am sorry sir,” he said.
“Ok, but you filed the story. What was your source? Who commissioned you to write this fiction?
Somebody that had something to do with this tortoise in the office thought that what would happen
would be my going into a coma on seeing the tortoise. You wrote what you heard and sent it to
Lagos, without cross-checking. Even when my media aides denied the story, you chose to ignore
them.”
“Well sir, this was what I heard.”
“Heard from whom? Who told you?”
He would not talk. My CSO wanted him arrested and interrogated, but I did not see any sense in that.
How can writing a false story amount to a crime? On what grounds would the reporter be detained
without an of
fence disclosed? Instead, the Press Secretary, Kingsley Agha, wrote the Daily Times and
asked that the reporter be withdrawn from covering the MFCT due to professional misconduct. He
was redeployed elsewhere and the paper published a prominent retraction the next day. Access to my
office was thereafter tightened by CSO Widi Liman, who thought that the secretary and cleaners must
have had something to do with ‘the security breach’. It was all amusing to me. I encouraged Widi to
do his job, but made no personnel changes in the office. A friend then gave me a ceramic model of a
tortoise which I kept on my desk throughout my time in FCT, as a reminder of the incident!
The rumours of ill-health, discovery of strange creatures in the office and attacks on the pages of
newspapers did not affect our focus on the assignment to clean up the FCT. The removal of illegal
structures of all kinds and descriptions was what dominated the media, but the challenges of dealing
with the unintended consequences of these actions occupied our team throughout those early months.
We had figured out how to handle the resettlement of the original inhabitants and other displaced
residents of Abuja amidst scarcity of financial resources and time. This need to maintain momentum
on all fronts remained paramount in my mind as we pursued the assignment with vigour.
Squatter Relocation as Safety Nets
Of course, I completely understood the anger of people on land-related issues. Aside from the 900-
plus buildings we demolished, we probably took down twice as many shanty structures, which could
not really be called buildings as some were nothing more than temporary accommodation on the
outskirts of the city. Toward the end of my term, we modified the resettlement policy (applicable to
the original inhabitants of Abuja) to include the "relocation" of squatters and other illegal occupants
of land. This enabled displaced people to be entitled to alternative land within the FCT regardless of
whether or not they had title.
The reason for this was largely because we realized there were so many people without title who had
been made homeless, so we had to find a way to give them preferential allocation of alternative land,
even though they were not entitled to it as a right. We even built low income housing in Pegi in Kuje
Area Council, which we did not consider in the beginning because we initially viewed the squatters
as strictly legal violations, rather than a social problem. To be honest, this was one of the few things I
think we really could have done a better job on – starting the relocation and social housing
programmes much earlier in our tenure.
Our initial focus on the mandate to clean up Abuja city, make it more orderly and pristine, led to an
unintended consequence – we did not invest early enough in satellite towns. Abuja was designed to
be an administrative centre, with low and middle income satellite towns around it. Not a lot of effort
was put into developing the satellite towns at the beginning because a lot of the committed investment
was concentrated in the city itself, which was mostly empty until about 1996. Even though we worked
on the infrastructure for six satellite towns, I now realize we started too late and it was not enough. If
we had made the satellite towns more affordable, serviced land there more available and connected
them with affordable transportation infrastructure, the cost of living in Abuja would have dropped
even more drastically than it did while I was running the FCT. If I had the chance to do this again, I
would start investing in satellite town infrastructure and the build-out of a metro system from day one,
rather than putting a lot of the resources toward trying to make the city centre and its network of roads
and bridges to work better first. Alas, rarely are all facts known at the beginning of a project’s
undertaking.
Restoration of Wuse Market: ‘It’s Impossible, Hon. Minister’
If tearing down one of the buildings of the federal ministry of works was the beginning of earning
street credibility with the people of the FCT, the turning point was undoubtedly the restoration of
Wuse Market, the oldest market in Abuja. Wuse market was another of the early distortions of the
Abuja master plan – its location was earmarked for a school, but a traditional market emerged
instead. Wuse Market was originally designed to have some 1,800 shops, but over time, by
continuous additions of illegal structures and shops, there were more than 13,000 shops. The car park
had been converted to shops with the acquiescence of successive ministers and FCDA staff. All the
walkways that were meant for people to enter and exit the shopping areas freely and securely had
become shops. The situation had quite simply become as chaotic as might be expected of something
that multiplies from nearly 1,800 to over 13,000.
When we first inspected Wuse Market and compared it to what was originally planned, our biggest
concern, which became a nightmare, was that in the event of a fire, everything in the market would be
destroyed. No fire vehicle could get in because there was no access. No one would be able to get out
or take out anything and it would just be a major disaster. We discussed the options available with my
staff and the line directors in the FCDA. What many of the directors advised was to leave things as
they were, build more markets and de-congest the Wuse market gradually.
This was understandable since I was aware that some of them owned many of the illegal shops. In my
view this was a "do-nothing" solution, and is a typical civil servants approach to any serious problem
– protect their interest first. I had another “inner circle” session with some of my closest colleagues,
including Idris Othman, Isa Shuaibu and Hadiza Abdullahi, and agreed an alternative course of action,
to restore the market to its original design. To lay the basis for this, I convened a meeting with the
market men and women and the shopkeepers’ associations. I outlined the level of distortions, the
dangers inherent, and concluded that something had to be done.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this situation in Wuse market cannot continue,” I said.
“Well what do we do then?”
“We will relocate some of you,” I said. “We will start work on building more markets so that
some can move, but we have to restore Wuse Market back to what it was originally.”
“It is impossible to go back to that, honourable Minister.”
‘Impossible’ – I learned to love hearing this word. I remembered what one Nobel Laureate said -
"impossible only takes a little longer," and smiled at the shopkeepers because I knew we were going
to do it anyway. Through an open bid process, we got four private companies to build four markets
contracted on Build-Own-Operate-Transfer basis. [56] We did not pay them a penny; we just gave
them the land and a 60-year lease with the understanding that on expiration, the land and buildings
would revert to the FCTA. We also invested public funds to expand two more markets then under
construction in Gudu and Garki II, making a total of six markets that will be able to absorb these
13,000 shops and more on completion. Once that process was under way, we began planning the
clean-up of Wuse Market. The first market in Gudu was ready and we put up the shops for sale. The
shopkeepers in Wuse were reluctant to move. “This is the market that our customers know
,” was the
common refrain.
“Have you heard of advertising?” I asked. “Just tell your customers that you are moving from
point A to point B.”
“No, no, we are not moving from here.”
Now, had I been asking a question, as in, ‘will you please move from here?’ saying ‘no, no, we are
not moving from here’ would have been a perfectly legitimate response. Unfortunately for them, we
had given them all the required notices under the law and we were not asking a question, but making a
statement: “You have three weeks from today to move. By midnight, three weeks from today, we will
start removing every illegal addition - whether shop and structure in Wuse Market and we will shut
down the market for about three weeks.”
They did not believe us. Until then, something like this – some official saying that a government
department was going to do something difficult and then actually doing it when people were resisting,
arguing, fighting or running to a general, a senator or president, or whatever – this was simply not
done. Nevertheless, midnight arrived and we started. In the end, it took us five weeks but we cleaned
up Wuse Market and got it back to what it was originally. Nobody in Abuja could believe it. The
original shopkeepers became our biggest advocates because now they had proper shops, with no
other businesses blocking them and an open customer thoroughfare.
Furthermore, the market became clean, organized and a pleasure to visit and shop at. That was when I
first began to get any commendation from the people of Abuja. Before then, shopping in Wuse Market
was hell on earth, because shoppers had to constantly squeeze between people just to pay for
something and pickpockets ran rampant. Driving and parking became easier too – possible, actually.
The Accidental Public Servant Page 34