The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  When he was appointing his secretary to the government, he called me to ask for names – explaining

  first that he was looking for a career public servant with experience in politics to be his secretary to

  the government. He also called looking for a meeting with the UNDP and the country director for the

  World Bank because he wanted to begin exploring what the World Bank could assist him with when

  he took over. The World Bank country director had become a good friend of mine, an Egyptian named

  Hafez Ghanem, so I brought him to see Yar’Adua. He basically called when he wanted something that

  was relevant to my network, expertise or connections and that was pretty much it.

  During Yar’Adua’s first few weeks in office, I went ahead with the plans I outlined to him. I first

  traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform the Umrah, followed by a two-week programme at Harvard

  Kennedy School, and then with Hadiza, went on a North Atlantic jazz cruise courtesy of Hakeem

  Belo-Osagie. I was doing what I had wanted to do for years, but could not. Yar’Adua and I remained

  in touch and every time I saw him that summer, it seemed to be the same story with him: he

  perpetually needed to see me, to request for help, but then when we would finally sit down again, it

  was as though the previous conversation had never happened and we would start all over. “I need you

  around here,” he uttered this phrase to me more than thrice that summer and then periods of radio

  silence followed, despite the intermittent requests for some involvement. What was happening behind

  the scenes, and I say this only after hearing it from multiple sources who were on the inside, was that

  after those first 100 days or so, Yar’Adua had given up on being able to run the federal government.

  His first week, the amount of paperwork that came to his desk was so overwhelming. He could not

  believe that the president was required to read all those memos and approve or comment on each one.

  Obasanjo, the taskmaster, did, indeed, do all of that. Obasanjo was a very hands-on president who

  wanted to know everything. Anything that ought to concern the president, Obasanjo wanted to be

  briefed on, and he worked 20 hours a day to make sure he did not miss anything. Umar was certainly

  intelligent but had limited capacity to work long hours. In Katsina, such an approach was not going to

  be problematic because it was an easy, laid-back state, everyone spoke the same language, virtually

  everyone was Muslim, and everyone was related somehow –akin to one large extended family.

  Running the nation at large was a little bit more complicated, and it did not matter how well one

  delegated as president of Nigeria, one must work sixteen hours minimum, every day, Sundays

  included.

  As one of the people I know who had been on the inside in the early Yar'Adua days put it to me, “By

  the end of the first month, we were panting. It is as if we were involved in a long sprint. By the

  second month, we were shaking our heads with disbelief. We could not believe how difficult things

  were that needed doing. By the third month, we had pretty much given up and decided that we would

  go after three or four things that were important to us and focus on them: petroleum, agriculture,

  various Chinese deals and electric power, because there were lots of contracts there and presumably

  some money to be made by the inner circle.” That was it. The rest of government basically got

  ignored so that Yar’Adua could focus on these four areas that his inner circle felt they could make

  money from, would enable them to show some results, and sleep the rest of the time.

  Two other signs that something went wrong, though I still had yet to piece it all together, were

  revealed very soon after we left office. The first was about a week after I turned in my diplomatic

  passport. The ministry of foreign affairs wrote to the president to say that many former ministers had

  not turned over their diplomatic passports and some of them could constitute security risks to the new

  administration. This was before Yar’Adua’s ministers were even appointed. The foreign ministry

  approved the cancellation of all the diplomatic passports and recommended that such should be

  impounded upon presentation to Nigerian immigration. My name was apparently number one on the

  list of former ministers in question, even though I had already turned in the passport in question. When

  Umaru sent his chief of staff instructions to recover the diplomatic passports, the chief of staff

  complied, but informed him that I had already turned mine in. As at then, most of my colleagues still

  had their diplomatic passports.

  The second indication that something was amiss came that summer. One day, a detachment of police

  officers from the presidential villa came and surrounded the house I had just purchased in the federal

  government house sales programme. The policemen declared that no one was to enter or exit the

  house, because it was the vice-president’s guest house and my occupation of it was illegal. The house

  was formerly allocated to the vice-president’s office, but all such guest houses were approved for

  sale, and had been sold. I bought it at a price approved by the cabinet and on terms identical to the

  terms offered other political office holders and at more than twice the price paid by career public

  servants. My family was at home at the time and ended up being detained for some four hours. My

  wife tried calling me but could not reach me as I was out of town, so she called Nuhu. He came to the

  house and called the president’s chief of staff, who called the head of the State House police and

  ordered them to withdraw.

  What prompted all these, allegedly, were people from Atiku's camp starting a media campaign,

  raising questions about the house, which caused then-vice-president Goodluck Jonathan to enquire as

  to why he did not have guest houses. He was not the one who gave the orders to the police, though. To

  this day, it is unclear who gave the orders.

  One day in September, Tanimu Yakubu called me to say Umaru wished to appoint me to the

  membership of the National Energy Council. Obasanjo had recommended to him that I should be so

  appointed, because of the results achieved when I chaired the cabinet committee on power supply

  improvement. It was a part-time obligation, which perfectly fit my plans. What I later learned was

  that there were a number of other dynamics happening, even with something as seemingly innocuous

  as this. The council consisted of the chairman, which would be Yar’Adua, the vice-chairman, who

  was the vice-president, several ministers and four outsiders. I was one of the four outsiders.

  The original intention here was that Yar’Adua wanted to make me ‘alternate chairman’ and then

  basically just hand over day-to-day running of the council’s operations to me. Mind you, I had no idea

  about this at the time, as it was nothing close to what I had personally negotiated. Only through

  conversations after the fact with two people close to Yar’Adua did I learn of this. Apparently,

  everyone that Yar’Adua had spoken to told him that I could help him resolve the electricity problem

  and other power issues, so he wanted to inaugurate the council, then step back and allow me to run it

  as alternate chairman, and then probably take all the credit afterwards. This would have

  approximated to being a full-time assignment, something I was unwilling to accept at the time.

&nbs
p; Frankly, I had no opportunity to decide on the matter as no one bothered to inform me of the plan.

  Where it all fell apart was, according to a minister close to the situation, when Yar’Adua told

  Obasanjo what his plan was on the matter. Obasanjo counselled against this – he had recommended

  that I should be on the council, but not as alternate chair because according to the source, that would

  make me ‘too powerful’ and would turn out to be a problem for Yar’Adua. As a regular member of

  the council, I was quite able to contribute technically to the work of the council, but in a position of

  leadership, Yar’Adua would have problems with me, in Obasanjo’s opinion, according to the former

  minister. So within hours, Yar’Adua’s stance on my role in the council had changed, and by the time

  the council convened its first meeting, I had no idea of what had been happening behind the scenes. In

  any event, I ended up attending only one meeting of the council - the inaugural meeting in September

  2007. That was the last time Yar’Adua and I saw each other. I subsequently learnt of all the intrigue

  after my return to Nigeria, exactly four days before Yar’Adua’s death.

  The Smear Campaign Begins

  From that point, I honestly do not know for sure what went wrong. I have thought about this over and

  over and I have no concrete answers. What I have are anecdotes about events that happened, some

  observations, some deductions and a certainty that my life from then on was never the same.

  The hint that I had a potential problem on my hands was when my successor in the FCT, who had

  been a friend of mine for over 27 years, Aliyu Modibbo, started suggesting that some decisions of

  mine on land matters while I was in charge of the FCT were inappropriate. The moment I saw that I

  called a meeting with my close friends and I warned them, “Yar’Adua has decided to ‘get’ me. We

  should organize right away to confront him.”

  Everybody in the group said I was jumping the gun, that I had no basis to draw these conclusions, and

  that this was just Modibbo’s adventurism, and there was nothing to worry about. But I knew

  Yar’Adua very well, I knew his style. The moment it started, while I did not yet have a full view of

  everything that was likely to happen, I knew that Yar’Adua did not like open, public fights. He’s a

  surreptitious fighter, one who gets up to attack you while you are not looking, and then steps back

  before you turn to identify him. I said to them we should make this an open fight, otherwise it would

  get worse. But all my friends insisted I was wrong and that I was overreacting.

  The next red flag was the public hearings in the first half of 2008, which Aliyu Modibbo initiated at

  what we suspected and later confirmed were Yar’Adua’s behest. At that point, it was very clear to

  me what was happening, I just did not understand why. I later understood that Yar’Adua wanted some

  independent basis to persecute and if possible, prosecute me. He did not want to be the one to point

  the finger at me, rather, his style was to find someone else’s accusation to latch onto. So in this

  particular case he personally commissioned the National Assembly to do his bidding and then took

  the report and said he was only doing what the legislature insisted he should do. Had I met with him

  that first day, he would have denied any involvement and strictly leaned on the National Assembly’s

  findings as being something he was obligated to act upon as a constitutional duty.

  Nuhu was still in the EFCC then and had become somewhat chummy with Umaru. So he thought then

  that the situation could be managed. Personally, I knew it was going all the way wrong and that there

  was no point in attending the public hearings because whether I attended and answered questions or

  not, knowing both Umaru and Aliyu Modibbo, the report had already been written. I was convinced

  that it was a kangaroo hearing that would do Umaru's bidding - "get Nasir at all costs." Nuhu

  disagreed with me and persuaded my inner circle that more or less forced me to agree to attend the

  hearings. My initial position was to go to court and challenge everything about the legality of the

  investigation. The group decision was that since we had nothing to hide, and we had all our facts, I

  should appear before the Senate Committee and defend our tenure. They did not realize that my

  earlier history with the Senate ensured that I would never ever have a fair hearing. I think now my

  group of friends knows better. I have been a victim of my belief in the wisdom of crowds and group

  decision making but have no regrets. I have learnt to live with it.

  In any event, the administration clearly decided that the easiest way to destroy me was to go after

  precisely what I had going for me and cared most about, which was my personal integrity and record

  of performance. Once they started the public hearings, hysteria of course took over and nobody

  realized that the reason the FCT was then functioning properly was because the remnants of the

  orderly, auto-pilot system we had put in place there still worked. The city was running and people

  thought someone was running it, but no one was running anything. It was the system we put in place

  which the new gang was unable to destroy overnight. So the differences in performance were not

  apparent at that point in time. Secondly, if they could smear, without any proof or evidence, that was

  fine – that was why they investigated me –the gang was not in pursuit of truth, but the achievement of

  false and sensational headlines.

  They investigated me for financial corruption, for missing monies and tried to find people who had

  bribed me while in office. They called all the major contractors in FCT and asked them how it all

  went down, and nobody could say anything because nobody had ever been involved in that sort of

  thing with me. They called the banks, because the bank managers all were supposed to pay brokerage,

  commissions and kickbacks to ministers for deposits in their banks and none of them could point to

  any sort of such relationship with me. I never met any bank manager before starting any banking

  relationship with the FCTA. These functions were delegated to my special assistant on economic

  matters and the FCT director of treasury, who remained silent, like true civil servants, when I was

  falsely accused by the new boss. Aliyu Modibbo, a friend of many years, led the charge not only to

  'put Nasir's arrogant ass in the right place,' as he told a mutual friend, but to please his employer,

  Umaru Yar’Adua.

  The administration’s presecution battalion, led by Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, Senator Abubakar Danso

  Sodangi, Attorney-General Michael Aondoakaa, and EFCC chair Farida Waziri (who took charge

  after Nuhu had been forced out) were quite frustrated because they could not find anything unlawful

  with which to tar and feather me. Umaru thought that I was either very clever or extremely lucky, and

  he kept asking everyone, “How can anyone run Abuja for four years and leave no trace of any money

  missing?” Even the attorney general said he was unable to find anything to prosecute from all the

  investigations by the EFCC and the police. Umaru’s reply to the attorney general was that nobody

  could be that honest or that careful, and they must keep digging.

  As an example of how desperate the administration was for any sort of dirt on me, they concocted a

  story hinting that I had misappropriated funds
from the sale of federal government houses in Abuja.

  We sold houses on behalf of the federal government for 96 billion naira, and yet only 64 billion naira

  was in the bank, so in their eyes, 32 billion naira was still ‘unaccounted for.’ What they conveniently

  left out of this snappy little accusation was that house sales of 96 billion naira did not necessarily

  lead to 96 billion naira in cash, as some mortgages had not been fully funded. However, it was a good

  headline, which they paid some newspapers a great deal to put on the front page. Their argument

  when audits and bank accounts revealed where all the funds were was that they did not actually say I

  stole anything, they had simply alleged that it was “unaccounted for.”

  We know this is unnecessary innuendo that is only perpetuated by people trying to distract attention

  from some inconvenient truth. When this accusation failed and Yar’Adua’s hit men still had not found

  anyone who could testify to bribing me, they then went through the entire database of plots of land I

  allocated while I was at FCT – this is over 27,000 plots of land – and they picked out 19

  beneficiaries named Rufai or El-Rufai, assumed that they were all my relations and ignored the fact

  that half of them received land before I was even running the FCT, and my family never had the

  monopoly of the name "Rufai". The numbers of plots I purportedly allocated to my family members

  kept changing due to protests by, for instance, Senator Rufai Sani Hanga from Kano State, who was

  listed as my brother, and a Sharia Court judge named Ali Rufai who was certainly not my brother

  with the same name, who had retired from the Nigerian Air Force as an air vice marshall. In the latest

  EFCC smear story, the number of plots allocated to my extended family members had come down to

  less than eight out of more than 27,000 plot allocations I approved during my tenure.

  In short, nobody could find anything substantive that spoke to any wrongdoing of mine. This was why