The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  let me tell you what I want you to talk to him about.”

  I explained to them my position. To Obasanjo, I was being sent to sensitize the leaders on his behalf

  on constitutional amendments to. In my mind, my duty required a different mission, to try to advance

  the national interest as I saw it. I noticed that these leaders did not realize the danger we were in as a

  nation, that there was a chance, albeit very small, that Obasanjo could succeed in getting his ‘third

  term’ because many legislators were unprincipled, and politicians were easily swayed by money.

  This was why the president’s third term team spent a lot of time raising huge amounts of money –

  more than $300 million by Nuhu Ribadu's informed estimate. I thought the nation’s political leaders

  needed to think through a response to each of the two possible outcomes. Shagari and the Sultan of

  course said yes, they saw the point of engaging with Obasanjo but reaffirmed they would not be part

  of anything that enabled him to get a third term.

  “Of course not,” I said. “In fact, you can make it very clear that you do not support it.

  Just be talking to him. When this third term effort dies, you can then be in a position

  to prevent him from doing damage to the whole system. My sense is that when it fails,

  he would be very upset and would identify objects of revenge. Only people of your

  standing can mitigate what damage he can do.”

  The Sultan promised to engage Obasanjo directly. President Shagari encouraged me to visit and brief

  Dr. Umaru Dikko, and maintain all future contacts with him on the subject.

  I enquired about General Buhari, and learnt that Buhari had not spoken to Obasanjo since 2003. No

  one seemed to know why, all I learnt was that they were not talking. Buhari was a different kettle of

  fish. I did not know him well then. I had never had any meeting with him, no interaction with him at

  all prior to this turn of events. I did know that the man still commanded national respect and near

  reverence in the north – he is probably the only politician who could announce that he wanted one

  million people to come out in the streets for some event the next day and two million would show up -

  without being paid to do so. I had to go through Dr. Mahmud Tukur, who remains one of my

  intellectual guides and is very close to General Buhari, to arrange a meeting. I went with the same

  message, but could tell from the very beginning that dealing with him was going to be very different.

  “I am here because I had a conversation with President Obasanjo and he said you

  have not been talking,” I said.

  “Minister, if you are here to talk to me into supporting Obasanjo's third term

  ambition, you are wasting your time,” said General Buhari.

  “No I am not here to talk about third term, sir.” And he relaxed.

  “Ok, but he sent you to me?”

  “Yes. He said you two have not spoken for two to three years.”

  “When his wife died, I sent him my condolences.”

  “Yes but you have not spoken with him.”

  “Well what does he want to talk about?”

  “I do not know, but you two should be talking. You are a former president, he is the

  current president. You were his petroleum minister. You were very close, and

  enjoyed mutual respect. You should be talking.”

  “Ok, true. One day I will talk to him.”

  “No, you should talk to him now.”

  “Well, let me think about it.”

  That was the first time I ever met General Buhari and that was about all we discussed. I had to visit

  him three or four times in Kaduna before I could convince him and it was the same core message that

  was communicated to Shagari and the Sultan. [114]

  “Excellencies, you are national leaders, but in addition you are also seen as our community

  leaders by ordinary northerners,” I said. “And we have a situation here. Obasanjo wants to

  get a third term. He might get it. He might not. Whatever the outcome, as northern community

  leaders, you should be interested in engaging with him. As national leaders, you have a duty

  to manage the success or failure of this attempted power grab.”

  “He will not get a third term,” Buhari said.

  “I believe you. But what if he gets it?”

  “No, he can’t get it.”

  “I am sorry General, your job as a leader is to open your mind to the possibility, no matter

  how remote, that he could get it. After all, he has the resources of the state, corruptible people

  in the political space, and control of coercive instruments of power to force his way. What if

  he gets it? What will be your reaction? What will be the response of northern community

  leaders? What will be your response as a national leader?”

  Buhari was silent. He had no immediate response.

  I continued, “General Sir, this is my point. As community leaders, you need to be thinking of a

  strategy, a response, just in case he gets it. As national leaders you have a duty also to engage

  with him, and be talking to him, so that in case he does not get it, you would prevent him from

  becoming a bull in the china shop of the Nigerian state. He could destroy everything. He

  could endanger our democracy, he could make wrong choices or unleash vengeful policies

  that will negatively affect the people of Nigeria as his revenge on them for openly opposing

  his third term bid. You are our leaders, you should be thinking about this, considering options

  and scenarios, Sir, not sitting back and saying, ‘he won’t get it.’ This third term attempt is

  very real, Sir.”

  I believed this pitch got him thinking.

  After nearly three years of the silent treatment, this conversation may have convinced General Buhari

  to engage with President Obasanjo. He knew his former boss well. He was careful. First, a

  delegation representing General Buhari consisting of Dr. Mahmood Tukur, Adamu Fika, Wazirin

  Fika, and Dr. Suleiman Kumo had an initial meeting with Obasanjo at the Banquet Hall, near the State

  House. It was after that exploratory meeting that Buhari finally took a call from Obasanjo and I

  stepped completely out of the picture. I learnt from Obasanjo that the trio led by Wazirin Fika

  reportedly told him off, informed him that he had derailed, and assured him that his Third Term

  project would be defeated. At this point I was not looking like a successful emissary in Obasanjo's

  eyes, but my job was done. Merely by reaching out, we succeeded in recruiting Buhari[115] to

  spearhead the guerilla warfare that helped end "the Constitutional Amendment" debates in the

  National Assembly.

  Buhari remained available to engage with Obasanjo while making repeated trips to Abuja to visit

  legislators in their houses, or call them, making a pitch for them not to support the third term attempt.

  His first basic argument was that the American Constitution, which was what we modeled our

  constitution on, started without a term limit provision, but over time the Americans realized these

  term limits were necessary and this was why it is in our constitution and we should not change it.

  Secondly, if we amend the constitution to allow a third term, what stops Obasanjo from trying to get a

  fourth term, or a fifth or a sixth? Where will it end? When does the work of government end? When

  does the work of a leader stop? At some point, one must draw a line and hand over to a successor.

  Buhari had
considerable moral authority and was completely disinterested in the outcome of the third

  term debate, so having him available and physically in Abuja to oppose it helped a lot in defeating

  Obasanjo, Tony Anenih, Amadu Ali, Ojo Maduekwe, Senators Ibrahim Mantu, Dalhatu Sarki Tafida

  and other third term protagonists. What was impressive about Buhari was that he did this all very

  quietly and effectively without the desire to claim any credit. In the House of Representatives, the

  most vocal and articulate opponents of Third Term who rallied around Dr. Usman Bugaje (PDP)

  included Farouk Adamu Aliyu and Bala Ibn Na’Allah of the ANPP, and Femi Gbajabiamila of AD.

  They all did a great job, were courageous and took great risks to openly oppose the third term

  project, while others like Atiku claimed victory.

  How the Third Term Project was initiated

  With this new communication channel I was shepherding, Obasanjo now had to let me in a bit more

  on some of the things they were doing. A public communications management group was formed and I

  was included as a member. Circulated at one of the meetings was a public relations budget for media

  spending to the tune of 1.2 billion naira that was drawn up in support of the third term. I was amazed

  and wondered how it would be funded. The response was that NNPC and the FCT Administration

  were expected to provide the funds and I was given a copy of the budget. I had no intention of using

  FCT's security budget for such an endeavour. I was, therefore, relieved when Leadership, one of the

  newspapers in vehement opposition to the third term project, obtained the budget and it was front

  page news a few days later. The chief of staff to the president summoned me and suggested that the

  president had been informed that I was the source of the leak. [116] I did not bother to deny anything

  as I had got used to being credited for any leaks that emanated from ThisDay and Leadership

  newspapers.

  At another point, I asked Tony Anenih, who was the minister of works during the first Obasanjo term

  and one of the project managers for the third term effort, how things were progressing. He produced a

  list of all the National Assembly legislators with crosses and ticks to denote which ones were

  supporting the effort and which were against it. He suggested that I sway some of the legislators

  against the effort by offering them plots of land in Abuja in my capacity as FCT minister. I took the

  list, but did no such thing. I did, however, share this list with other interested parties.

  Meanwhile, we generally knew Obasanjo's people would pay lots of money to the National Assembly

  members to try getting the two-thirds majority they needed, but beyond that we did not know how they

  would do it and we did not even know who was going to be paying out the money. Nuhu directed the

  financial intelligence unit of the EFCC to track cash movements, mostly from the states to Abuja,

  which accounts most of the money ended up in, and so forth. Most of the money was allegedly going

  to companies and bank accounts controlled by Andy Uba, who was the president’s special assistant

  on domestic matters that handled those things for him.

  All of these actions and efforts were being undertaken without any of us really having a full picture of

  just how, legislatively speaking, the third term amendment was going to be packaged. Obasanjo’s

  managers finally made their first move on this front. They dusted off a very old report commissioned

  in 1999, ‘to look at the 1999 Constitution and suggest various amendments'. The idea was to hide the

  term limits provisions by mixing them up with other more desirable constitutional amendments.

  For instance, at that time there was a lot of discontent about how governors were using their

  constitutional immunity to engage in grand corruption. Many state governors were involved in money

  laundering and diversion of public funds, and our Constitution gives them immunity from prosecution

  while in office. The Supreme Court of Nigeria had ruled that they could be investigated and the

  findings, no matter how dire, could be published, but they cannot be charged in court until they leave

  office. There were huge levels of anger throughout the country about that. [117]

  As a result, there was a provision in the amendments to remove the immunity of sitting governors,

  along with a few aspects of our Constitution that most people agreed needed changing. Buried with

  these was the provision to remove term limits or to allow up to three terms of office, which was what

  Obasanjo wanted. The president’s legal team even came to my office one day to discuss questions

  relating to Abuja since, from a constitutional standpoint, Abuja does not have quite the same powers

  or rights as states, but rather is an entity unto itself as the Federal Capital Territory. In the end, a

  bill[118] containing several amendments went before the National Assembly with hundreds of

  millions of dollars raised to procure its passage. Most of the money came from governors friendly to

  Obasanjo, but some also came from Lagos-based businessmen. The idea was to use this money for not

  only bribing legislators, but also for public relations, such as the production of jingles and movies

  depicting Obasanjo as moving the country in the right direction – mentions of debt relief, his role in

  ending the civil war – without explicitly stating that he just wanted to stay longer.

  Some National Assembly members were reportedly recruited and paid large amounts of money to

  spearhead the effort, so as to make it look as if the idea came from the National Assembly rather than

  from the administration. Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu, (of “54 million naira” fame), took

  the lead in the Senate, Bako Sarai from Kano in the House of Representatives, while Tony Anenih, as

  the chairman of the PDP board of trustees, reached out to the electronic media, the state governors

  and other political heavyweights. Obasanjo did not directly meet with anyone until very late in the

  game.

  As the debate progressed into the month of April 2006[119] and voting day to refer the bill to

  committee for second reading approached, the struggle to ensure passage became so desperate at one

  point that Aminu Masari, the House speaker, was invited to a meeting with the PDP national

  chairman, Dr. Amadu Ali, and Tony Anenih and other PDP apparatchiks. In the meeting Ali and

  Anenih pressed Speaker Masari to just call for a voice vote on the term limits clause and then declare

  it passed regardless – no show of hands, no electronic vote tally. Masari was very direct.

  “I can’t do that – there is an electronic counter,” Masari said.

  “We’ll disable it the day before the debate,” Amadu Ali said.

  But Masari, to his credit, would not budge.

  “Whenever there is such doubt or confusion or an important matter like that, or any provision

  in a controversial bill of this nature,” he explained to them, “we do a division – we do not do

  voice votes or even do a show of hands. We say those for, stand to the left, those against,

  stand to the right.”

  “Do not do that, just do a voice vote,” said Amadu Ali

  We heard the details of this incident directly from other persons who attended the crucial meeting, as

  by then, both Masari and Nnamani were reluctant to confide in many of their colleagues because they

  were no longer sure which ones would go back and tell the Obasanjo crew. So we took
this

  information to Dr. Usman Bugaje to share with the House opposition and craft a response in case any

  of the two presiding officers buckles to pressure. Two days later, Bugaje came back to us.

  “I have 152 members of the House that have signed a pledge to write individual letters stating

  that they would be withdrawing participation in the business of the House, until this provision

  on tenure elongation has failed,” he declared. “Then they will resume attending the House and

  join the rest of the sessions. They are prepared to debate the other amendments. But as soon

  as debate on term limits begins, 152 members will withdraw from the House.”

  Since the House had 360 members, if at least 121 members withdraw, less than two-thirds of the

  chamber remains in session, disabling any constitutional amendment from passing. The Bugaje

  group’s plan was that 152 members would not even be in attendance – they would each write letters

  officially to the speaker stating that for the period in which this particular issue was being debated,

  they would be withdrawing from participation in the proceedings. In this scenario, the speaker would

  take a count and declare that attendance was less than two-thirds full and therefore a vote can either

  not be taken, or taken and not passed. It makes it easier on the speaker because it removed any burden

  of responsibility from his discretion. In short, nearly half of the House of Representatives were

  willing to protest this – and they were not just from the north, but from all over the country, both

  Christian and Muslim. When Dr. Bugaje furnished the list of 152 members, we agreed that it would

  be prudent to bring the list to Obasanjo's attention so as to give the president the opportunity to