The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  man show on the part of Nuhu – he never told me, he never confided in anyone until it was too late to

  counsel him otherwise. As soon as I heard that the chairman of Mashi Local Government, a young

  man that my sister living in Mashi town knew very well, had been arrested, I figured out what my

  friend was up to.

  “Nuhu, what the hell are you doing?”

  I asked him, wanting to know why the chairman of Mashi Local Government and a family friend had

  been arrested and detained in Abuja.

  “Yallabai, we can still take charge of this. No, we can’t allow Obasanjo to do this,” he said.

  Nuhu was still delusional about what he could do to override a strong-willed president.

  “Look, we had a problem. Obasanjo wanted ‘not to leave’. Now he has got someone he is

  comfortable with to run for president, which means he has accepted that he would leave. We

  all wanted Obasanjo to leave, and with this development, there is a chance he would leave.”

  “Asking for anything more than this – it is just being selfish. You want me to be president

  because I am your friend, not because you think I am quite different or better than Yar’Adua.

  Leave this thing alone. Whatever your plans are, whatever your plans were, they have not

  worked partly because you have not made it open and inclusive - for everyone to know what

  you were thinking, planning, and doing. You were doing this alone. It is now over. So drop it.

  Anything you do henceforth will only just confirm what people say about you – that you target

  people that threaten certain interests. If you had been investigating Yar’Adua for a year

  beforehand, that would be different, but you were not. It is too late to start now. Please stop

  it.”

  I was not the only one – Oby and several others urged him to stop, and he eventually did. If Nuhu had

  trusted anyone with whatever his vision was and we had jointly come up with a plan for me or indeed

  anyone we settled on to run for president, perhaps we would have developed an overall strategy that

  might have worked. However, Nuhu never trusts anyone with his plans. He preferred to plan and act

  alone if he could – this is simply how he is. By the time we realized what was going on and Nuhu had

  even recruited a couple of my wealthy friends to support and agree to bankroll his "last man standing"

  strategy, things had gone really bad, for me and all of us.

  Breakfast with Obasanjo: the ‘transition’ period

  A few days after Nuhu’s showdown with Obasanjo, the president invited me over for breakfast.

  Typically, people come by the residence early for morning prayers and stay around for breakfast, but

  that morning, he made a point to clear everyone out, leaving just the two of us in the main dining room

  of the residence. Obasanjo was generally a simple eater at breakfast time, some boiled yams and

  fried eggs. That day, I remember I just had a healthy bowl of Quaker Oats.

  “You know, your brother came here, he was very angry about my choice of Umaru Yar’Adua,” he

  began, referring to Nuhu. “He accused me of all sorts of things, he was angry that I did not pick you to

  be the presidential aspirant that I was backing.”

  “I was not an aspirant and never in contention, Mr. President.”

  “I know. You have never spoken to me or hinted at anything like that. But Nuhu somehow felt

  that you should have been the one.”

  “That is his opinion that I do not share, sir. But it does not matter. It is fine.”

  “Well, let me tell you something. I thought about you but I decided that this is not the time.

  The next four years – 2007 to 2011 – is just a transition period. The nation and our politics

  are not ready for someone like you. I feel you still have a few more things to experience, to

  learn.”

  “Transition period?”

  “Yes.”

  “I do not understand. Please explain, Mr. President.”

  “Well, nothing will change, you know? I will be in Ota but we will be running things.

  Everything will remain the same, you know, you will remain in the government, the economic

  team will remain. Nothing will change. Only I will move to Ota and Yar’Adua will be here

  but we will be running things.”

  “I see. Well you know Mr. President, I will not be part of this transition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well I have my plans. I have personal things to do and frankly I think I have given enough of

  my life to this government business, I need a break.”

  “No, no, all of you will be here. You need to be here.”

  “No, Mr. President. I will not be here. I am taking a break - at least two years.”

  “Ok, well I just thought I should call you and explain to you that the next four years is just a

  transition period. The real change in government will happen in 2011. Not now.”

  “Ok. I do not understand what you are saying, but if you say so, it is ok.”

  What is amazing about this conversation is that Obasanjo had similar ones with at least two others -

  Nuhu Ribadu and Osita Chidoka. By sharing that view with Osita, who is one of his trusted co-

  conspirators, he was not just telling me and Nuhu that line to calm us down; I think he truly believed it

  - that "we" (that is, Obasanjo and his boys) would be in charge, while Yar'Adua remained a

  figurehead! Not knowing Umaru Yar'Adua as I did, I thought Obasanjo had gotten that wrong, smiled

  all the way back to my house, and accelerated my plans to get out of Nigeria as soon as the handing-

  over process was completed.

  Obasanjo’s final night in power

  Of course, what he was saying was that he did not plan on leaving the scene entirely. On Obasanjo’s

  final night, the 28th of May, we had gone to the guest house where Yar’Adua was staying to put

  finishing touches to the inaugural speech. Up to that point, Yar’Adua was consulting me virtually

  every day, on things in general and also on his inaugural speech. I had asked a friend of ours, Dele

  Olojede, who later became the publisher of Next newspapers, to help draft the speech, and we were

  going over it, debating the level of detail we wanted it to cover. For instance, there was a debate as

  to whether 54 percent of Nigerians lived above the poverty line, or if it was a higher number, and

  whether it was appropriate to even mention what percentage, or simply stating the need to eradicate

  poverty would be enough. Those were the sorts of debates – little issues here and there. We debated

  the words to use to admit that the elections that brought Yar’Adua into power were not exactly picture

  perfect. Some of us were of the opinion that we should not even admit that the elections were flawed.

  At the end, we settled on the use of the word, “flawed”, rather than to say that the elections were

  outrightly terrible.

  To Yar’Adua’s credit, he delivered a speech that called the very elections that brought him to power,

  ‘flawed.’ We finally convinced him to accept this, then follow it up with a pledge to set up a high

  powered commission so that we learnt from the mistakes. We adjourned at around two in the morning

  and while I was driving home, Nuhu called me to ask me to join him and Obasanjo at the State House.

  When I arrived there, I could hear them shouting at each other the moment I got out of my car.

  “You are wrong! We will recover them!” Nuhu said. He was banging the table.

  I entered the room and all
of a sudden they both went silent.

  “What are you guys arguing about?”

  They brushed it off for the time being and quickly moved the conversation to other matters. This was

  just hours until power was handed over, so we discussed the few years we had been working

  together, focused mostly on the good things we did, and a bit of logistics for the next day. After about

  an hour, Nuhu and I left and that was when Nuhu alluded to the essence of the conversation they were

  having before I intruded.

  Many of us felt that Obasanjo made four huge mistakes in his presidency. The first was that Obasanjo

  had borrowed money to purchase shares in Transcorp, a company known to have plans to acquire

  certain government assets. The shares were offered to many government officials. Atiku Abubakar

  was offered, Ngozi was offered. I dissuaded both of them from taking up the offer because they were

  chair and vice-chair of the Privatization Council respectively. Ngozi actually considered borrowing

  money to buy the shares until I dissuaded her. I felt strongly that as government officials, we were

  sitting on councils, committees or in the cabinet that would approve some of these transactions. In my

  opinion, even if there was nothing wrong legally with it, there were ethical issues. Part of this came

  from my experience at the BPE, where we had a self-imposed rule that neither BPE staff nor

  privatization council members could buy shares of government companies being privatized. This was

  one of the first rules that we tightened upon entering the BPE, so I personally persuaded both Atiku

  Abubakar and Ngozi to reject the Transcorp share offer as well. We also told the president that we

  disagreed with his intention to purchase shares in Transcorp.

  What was even more troubling about the Transcorp deal was that the shares were offered to selected

  officials and "promoters" at one naira per share. We all had inside information that in a few months,

  these same shares were going to be listed on the stock exchange at six naira, so that would be 500

  percent capital gain practically overnight for doing nothing. I just thought it was immoral. Oby, Nuhu

  and I were never offered since the promoters knew our position on the share offer. Most economic

  team members declined to buy the shares and we told Obasanjo that much. Yet, he went ahead, using

  corporate entities and borrowed from banks and bought some seven hundred million shares.

  Assuming he sold not long after the company was listed on the stock exchange, he would have made

  billions of naira in profit. As I write this in early 2012, Transcorp shares trade for less than one naira

  each, which meant all those who bought early and did not sell immediately got burned.

  This Transcorp share acquisition made Nuhu very angry and this was what he was arguing about with

  Obasanjo when I arrived that night, as well as the other three mistakes of Obasanjo’s presidency: the

  third term effort which we all thought was a blemish for us as an administration, the fundraising for

  the Obasanjo Presidential Library while he was still in office, and the mistake of handing power to

  persons who had no idea or any experience in the running of the federal government. Nuhu and I

  parted ways for what remained of the rest of the night to catch a few hours of sleep before meeting for

  our final breakfast at the presidential villa.

  The fundraising for the Obasanjo Library was one issue on which Oby, Nuhu and I made separate and

  joint representations to Obasanjo not to proceed with. We felt that it was inappropriate and unethical

  for a sitting president to raise funds for something of which he would be a direct beneficiary. I was

  strongly of the view that Obasanjo should have arranged with his successor (Yar'Adua) to organize

  that in his honour after leaving office. Obasanjo did not even think twice, as he told me that no one

  would donate to the project once he was out of office. For me that admission confirmed the

  inappropriateness of the fundraising. Nuhu tried, appealed and even threatened Obasanjo to get him to

  cancel the planned event. In the end, Obasanjo, with the encouragement of Carl Masters of

  GoodWorks International, went ahead and raised billions of naira, at least on paper, for the

  construction of the library, hotel and residential facilities in Abeokuta. Nuhu attended, watching as

  each state government (excluding the FCT) donated ten million naira each, Nigeria’s richest men -

  Aliko Dangote and Mike Adenuga donated huge amounts, along with the NNPC, and the international

  oil companies. The Nigerian Ports Authority and other government institutions lined up to give away

  public funds as gifts to a sitting president. It was disgusting. Nuhu was incensed, but at that point, we

  all just wanted Obasanjo to hand over and leave. That last night we were together in the Villa, Nuhu

  raised this as one of Obasanjo's errors as president. I agreed with him.

  As I said, at the time, though I had my reservations derived from his past and personality, I did not

  think Yar’Adua was a bad choice at all, particularly after he was willing to admit that the 2007

  elections were flawed. I was legitimately optimistic he was going to build on the foundations we had

  laid as a government from the same party, and correct any of our mistakes, but keep moving in the

  same broad direction. Surely, I thought, what we did was largely positive, and in the best interest of

  the majority of our citizens. Personally, I was also looking forward to taking a break from the hectic

  life of the previous years. Even though the third term effort was successfully defeated for the time

  being, we still had the sense that Obasanjo had not really given up and as such were all sitting at the

  edge of our seats expecting him to pull out something at the last minute. So we made a habit of

  meeting with him every day – it was like a game of chess in many ways, in which we had to be

  watching and checkmating him at every point every single day because we were not sure what he was

  up to, or what he would do next.

  So by the time we went to the presidential villa for breakfast, there was a giant sense of relief. I also

  realized how exhausted I was. While the work was challenging, exhilarating and inspiring in many

  ways, working for the president of Nigeria necessarily forces one to lose some freedom and control

  over one’s life. By then, Obasanjo and his vice-president had become estranged, and the vice-

  president had moved to another party and was contesting for the presidency, leaving no effective

  vice-president in our final year. I was doing more or less whatever the president usually assigned the

  vice-president to oversee, like serving as a liaison with the electoral commission, monitoring

  preparations for the population census, and at various points running the ministries of interior,

  commerce and industries and several other assignments – Obasanjo was throwing everything at me

  and it was really stressful and I had never felt more overstretched in my whole life. The prospect of a

  break from this was very appealing, to pursue what I love doing – studying, travelling, and enjoying

  music, movies and the theatre, in the company of my lovely wives and wonderful children.

  Though I do not regret it, the way my role evolved was not something I had ever aspired to or sought

  out. Mine was a perpetually growing role because Obasanjo saw me as a person who got things done.

  Whenever he had a problem, whether it was the census b
eing delayed or the preparations for the

  elections not being up to speed or electricity production going down by 50 percent at the end of 2006,

  he just assigned me to resolve it. I did – each and every issue somehow got resolved to Obasanjo’s

  satisfaction.

  Indeed, in the final year of Obasanjo’s presidency, I was not just running the FCT but involved in an

  array of activities - I was required to handle the portfolios of the minister of commerce and industry

  (twice), minister of interior, chair of national or cabinet committees on electric power supply

  improvement, sale of federal government houses in Abuja, national ID Card, development of a

  national mortgage system, public service reforms, review of salaries and emoluments in the public

  service (including the military and the police), destruction of contraband, and was at various points

  the oversight and liaison with chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the

  National Population Commission. In the eyes of many, including some of my cabinet colleagues, I had

  by default become a de facto vice-president. The more I sorted out these issues, the more Obasanjo

  threw others at me, and it just became too much. I was always tired, sleep-deprived and exhausted.

  While I was being overworked, some of my other colleagues were becoming restless that I was

  getting all the attention of the president and perceived public recognition. Being the final year of his

  presidency, people did not have to make too big of a leap to conclude that Obasanjo was preparing

  me for anointment to succeed him. Obasanjo even sent me to the Niger Delta to work with James Ibori

  to find a way to create jobs in Warri. He established a presidential commission on job creation in