The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  of the malpractices that took place. At the time, we did not know how far Jonathan and the PDP were

  willing to compromise the electoral and judicial institutions to preserve and protect their stolen

  mandate. Neither did we expect that men of integrity within those institutions would succumb so

  easily to be willing tools of conferring legitimacy on fraud! But that was what happened in the months

  to come.

  I was also contacted by William Wallis, the Africa editor of the Financial Times, to write a short op-

  ed on Nigeria to be published as part of the paper’s coverage of the swearing-in of Goodluck

  Jonathan. William, an old friend from the late 1990s wanted three points of view on Jonathan to be

  published – a midway view which he thought would be provided by Bismarck Rewane, a chorister’s

  highly optimistic view provided by Atedo Peterside, and an opposite, pessimistic view of the

  Jonathan administration which he knew I held.

  The article, which was heavily edited by the FT[185] to remove the political aspects I covered, was

  nevertheless well received. I then decided to publish the complete (and expanded) version in

  ThisDay when Atedo Peterside got his views published on that paper’s back page. My piece titled

  “Jonathan’s Tough Choices” was both so popular and outrageous at the same time that a couple of

  weeks later, the publisher, Nduka Obaigbena, requested that I make it a weekly column. He suggested

  the simple byline of El-Rufai on Friday[186] and I have been writing it regularly since then.

  June 2011: ‘El-Rufai on Friday’ Debuts, GMB speaks at Chatham House

  One of the pieces I wrote for “El-Rufai on Friday” was titled “What Nigerians Pay the Federal

  Government.” [187] It was a cheeky title for what was a summarized analysis of the federal budget

  for 2011. It was an outrageous and incompetent budget by every measure and therefore an opposition

  party’s delight. It not only showed the levels of waste in spending, but also the misplaced priorities

  and corruption. It related that mismanagement to the life of the average Nigerian in the most

  pedestrian way – that each Nigerian was paying for all that waste and corruption. Many Nigerians

  related to that immediately. The authorities were incensed by “Jonathan’s Tough Choices” [188] and

  the subsequent one on the budget, and felt the need to deal with me. Ita Epkenyong, the head of the

  SSS, made the case that El-Rufai had to be dealt with before things got out hand. But I did not know

  all this at the end of June when we left Nigeria to go to London with GMB and Pastor Bakare. A

  couple of months later, I would publish another critical piece that for the first time, opened up the

  federal security budget for Nigerians to see what our government was wasting in the name of security

  expenditure against the insecurity outcomes we had in another piece – “Sleeping with both eyes

  open. ” [189]

  But before leaving for the UK, I was invited by Uba Sani to meet with Nuhu Ribadu and an inner

  circle of our friends in his house. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss all that happened

  between us starting from our exile years to the present, establish what went wrong and steps we both

  needed to take to avoid these recurring in the future. It was a soul-searching meeting during which we

  both learnt a lot about each other. Nuhu was bitter at my refusal to support his presidential aspiration,

  preferring Buhari instead, and so openly and publicly. I explained that the way and manner Nuhu

  pursued his ambition exhibited lack of trust in me and concern for my support. In the end, we

  understood each other and resolved to move forward as the friends and brothers that we have always

  been. I then left for the UK to meet up with Buhari and Bakare.

  Our collective concern over the mischievous and flawed image of the CPC and GMB in the media

  persuaded us to accept another Chatham House invitation to GMB to speak at the think tank. He was

  initially reluctant, but agreed providing Pastor Bakare and I went to London with him and I agreed to

  join him to present the case of the CPC. We did, and Buhari gave a stellar performance during the

  question and answer session. He was as articulate as he was passionate about the country’s problems

  and why he wept at his final campaign outing in Abuja. He made a case, both historical and factual,

  for the need for social justice in our country. We were all proud of him. It was the honest and

  patriotic Buhari we knew that came out that day in London – one that the Nigerian media had

  misrepresented so successfully. Many in the audience, including Jonathan’s sympathizers, were

  blown away by his passion, patriotism and concern for the voiceless and vulnerable. Those planted to

  ask questions got appropriate responses from both Buhari and Bakare. I summarized the voting

  statistics from the “clean” April elections and showed the clear turn-out fraud and rigging particularly

  in the South-East and South-South states in very clear and incontrovertible ways. Our British and

  Nigerian audience was stunned and left the event better informed about the ‘Deceitful Elections’ of

  April 2011!

  We also used the opportunity to meet with some British members of the House of Commons and the

  Lords. We hosted a dinner for the Nigerian Diaspora in the UK to interact with GMB at the Pearl

  Liang Chinese Restaurant in Paddington. Pastor Bakare and Buhari made some welcome remarks. My

  daughter Yasmin (now deceased) joined us and met Buhari for the first and what would turn out to be

  the last time. Kayode Ogundamisi and Dr. Garba Sani made passionate speeches about Nigeria’s

  future, and Buhari’s role in shaping it. Pastor Bakare made an eloquent speech that was cautiously

  optimistic about the country’s future despite everything. We then spent a few more days after the

  Chatham House event to debate and discuss the future of our party and country.

  We all believed that Jonathan’s tenure would be a disaster, but hoped that on the whole it was going

  to be slow-paced, dull but largely peaceful – even with the expected massive looting and corruption.

  So long as Nigerians are left alone by the government to pursue their legitimate livelihoods, we could

  focus on rebuilding our party and hope democracy and the nation survive till the next election. But the

  outcome of the economic research for my weekly columns had convinced me that serious dangers lay

  ahead. The socio-economic data pointed to far too much poverty, inequality and waste of resources

  for the political and economic structure to be sustained without a change in direction. I felt that

  something would have to give, one way or another, though I was not sure what and when. What I did

  not expect was to be arrested at the Abuja irport on my arrival from the UK!

  July 2011: Arrested on arrival at Abuja, and saved by Twitter

  I arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, around 5am on Saturday, 2 nd July to be

  detained by officers of the State Security Service. I was taken to the headquarters subliminally called

  Yellow House, after being detained for nearly two hours at the airport. While waiting, I said my Fajr

  prayers, and got my BlackBerry charged. Once the ever-reliable Etisalat Dubai service came on, I

  tweeted that I had been detained and was being taken to the SSS HQ. I posted the same on my

  Facebook page and broadcast it to all my contacts via BlackBerry Messenger. The arrest and

 
detention message went viral on all the social media platforms. Almost exactly seventeen hours later,

  the Nigerian authorities had to release me. My tweets immediately trended like crazy. Reuters,

  Associated Press, AFP, CNN, BBC World and Al-Jazeera all broke the news from the tweets, and

  the authorities began to receive frantic calls from within and outside Nigeria. The SSS had to issue an

  absurd statement saying I was arrested for writing something that was false and ‘inciting’ and later

  leaked to some selected newspapers that I would be charged for sedition. Subsequently I learnt that

  the Director General of the SSS, Ita Ekpenyong, got me arrested on the orders of the National Security

  Adviser, Andrew Owoye Azazi [190] who had cleared it with Jonathan in advance of my

  arrival. [191]

  I later came to learn that Jonathan, Ekpenyong and Azazi had a nasty Saturday. As soon as the story of

  my arrest was broken by the global news outlets, they received incessant calls reminding them that

  they were not a military regime that could detain citizens at will; that arresting me for exercising the

  freedom of speech and expression protected by the Constitution was unlawful; and that the colonial

  era crime of ‘sedition’- which the SSS was forced to admit via a statement issued that Saturday as the

  basis of my arrest and which they intended to charge me with- was no longer an offence in our laws

  as it violated the right to free speech entrenched in our Constitution. My party leader Buhari issued a

  very strongly-worded statement asking for my immediate release. Obasanjo was incensed. He called

  Azazi and Ekpenyong and told them that they had messed up big-time. He said that they just acquired

  an unnecessary and relentless adversary, and advised that I should be released and approached to

  mend fences. My friend and lawyer, Asue Ighodalo, reached Nduka Obaigbena to get to Abuja right

  away and get me out of detention. My friends Idris Othman, Tijjani Abdullahi and Balarabe Abbas

  Lawal, cut their weekends and kept vigil at the SSS headquarters until I was released. Dele Olojede

  called Azazi and Ita Ekpenyong to find out what was going on. Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim began reaching

  out to our friends and associates to organize a group response. Some other close family members and

  prominent friends of mine were surprisingly silent as if saying – “serves him right for daring to stand

  up to a sitting government.” I got home around 10pm that Saturday with my lawyer, A U Mustapha,

  and my wife Asia, with ThisDay colleagues Nduka Obaigbena and Segun Adeniyi in tow. [192]

  That was not the plan of Jonathan, Ekpenyong and Azazi. The SSS intended to arrest me quietly over

  the weekend, detain and torture me psychologically if not physically till Monday without anyone

  knowing about it or me having any access to lawyers, and then charge me for any trivial offence

  before a sufficiently-intimidated magistrate who would then remand me in prison custody with

  stringent bail conditions that would not be met for just a few more days. This is the modus operandi

  of the Nigeria Police and SSS which was perfected from the days of military dictatorship. That

  period of double incarceration then affords the authorities the time to smear the detainee some more,

  while he or she reflects on whether fighting on the side of the opposition was worth it. This plan was

  defeated - taken off the table by the availability of smartphone versions of Facebook, BlackBerry

  Messenger and Twitter!

  Within the seventeen hours of my detention, my Twitter following increased rapidly - from about

  three thousand to over seven thousand, and since then has increased by at least one hundred followers

  every day. The SSS and Twitter made an overnight social media celebrity of El-Rufai with no effort

  on my part. The narrative of my time with the SSS has been widely reported by the Nigerian media

  and is available for anyone interested, but a few things became clear from the experience. First the

  Nigerian security agencies mistakenly equate national security with the protection of the narrow and

  personal interests of anyone in power. They have no understanding of overriding public interest or

  loyalty to the state. They thought and believed that Jonathan is the State, and an article insulting to him

  constituted an offence! Second, the senior officers I interacted with were driven more by primordial

  and ethnic sentiments than competence and overall national interest. One of those that interviewed me,

  a woman ‘director’ suggested that instead of writing pieces criticizing the president, I should talk to

  “your people, Boko Haram, to stop all these killings.” I simply asked, ‘Are they not also your

  people?’ and thereafter ignored similar remarks.

  A few days later when I met the DG, SSS who once worked for me as state director of security at the

  FCT, the same sentiment surfaced, because as his justification for the arrest and illegal detention of a

  citizen, he asked me pointedly how I “would feel if a northerner was president and he was being

  attacked by south-south people”! Again, I was shocked that a national security chief, who had worked

  with me and ought to know that I have never in my life operated on the basis of such nonsensical

  sentiments, would now think, talk and act this way because he is DG, SSS under Jonathan! I knew

  then that the country was in greater trouble than I had estimated. I became more convinced than ever

  that the mindset and narrow worldviews of the key people in the Jonathan administration would

  manifest in deepening the divisions in the country and destroy all that some of us hold sacred. I was

  determined never to have anything to do with this brand of pathetic pretenders ever and further

  committed myself and all I have to holding them accountable for every decision and action till their

  last day in office, or until they change their attitude for the better and see Nigeria through more open,

  fair, just and inclusive eyes.

  Thirdly, the Nigerian security agencies are neither updated in their knowledge of constitutional rights

  nor are they willing to obey the constitution and the law. The SSS has no powers of arrest. They need

  to obtain a warrant from a judge after showing justifiable cause to be able to arrest any citizen. So my

  arrest and detention were patently illegal. They also seized and kept my passport for three days in

  violation of the law, the Constitution and the Court of Appeal decision in the case of Agbakoba v.

  The State, which substance was upheld by the Supreme Court in The Director of State Security v.

  Agbakoba. [193] When I was informed at about 2pm that day that I was then formally under arrest, I

  asked to see the warrant and the lawyer quoted some secret Statutory Instrument signed by Obasanjo

  in 1999 granting the SSS powers of arrest as in the Police Act. I responded that no such delegated

  legislation could override the Constitution and I refused to say anything until I met with my lawyer.

  They were taken aback and shocked. Clearly they were not used to being so challenged and insisted

  that my “interrogation” must go on without consulting a lawyer. When I kept quiet and ignored all

  their questions, they succumbed and I met with my lawyer-wife Asia and A. U. Mustapha. I had

  intended to sue the federal government seeking a declaratory judgment for all these violations but was

  persuaded by my friends to drop it. We had too many cases against the government already. I let it go

  but there is n
o statute of limitation against constitutional violations, so I may pursue it someday. The

  thinking and practices of our officials must comply with the constitution and our laws, and this can

  only be achieved through serial litigation against oppressive behaviour and any kind of

  unconstitutional conduct.

  The Last Few Months…..

  Even with the financial support of El-Rufai & Partners and a few of my better-off friends, I found my

  liquidity in dire straits by the middle of 2011. I had to find means of supporting my immediate family,

  the think tank I wanted to establish and the many political activities I was engaged in. The breakdown

  of governance meant that from time to time, demands by relations and even complete strangers for

  financial assistance towards the payment of school fees, hospital charges and even purchase of grains

  and groceries have become common, daily personal challenges. Some years back, these kinds of

  demands were few and far between, but these days, the floodgates are impossible to bear

  conveniently. Since we are in opposition, federal (and even state) government officials are reluctant

  to or scared of having any business dealings with our firm, El-Rufai & Partners. The fact that levels

  of corruption have risen significantly since we left office, compounded by our reputation not to be

  part of any corruption-tainted business arrangements, has affected our corporate and personal

  liquidity. We were therefore forced to explore business opportunities in neighbouring African

  countries where my friends and I have contacts within the governments and with leaders in the

  business community. We also looked at consulting opportunities in East, Central and Southern Africa,

  using our offices in Dubai as springboard.

  In November, the chairman of our party, Prince Tony Momoh, invited me to chair what came to be

  known as the CPC Renewal Committee. The task given to us was to rebuild and strengthen the party’s

  organization, operations and processes at all levels, while preparing for upcoming governorship