I wouldn’t like to call Nasir El-Rufai a crook. No, he does not deserve that appellation. However, after searching for a better adjective to qualify him, it appeared to me that crook makes better sense when describing the former FCT Minister. My conclusion is based on a tweet he made recently. Someone had gotten across to him on twitter and asked why he had suddenly become silent and no longer throwing darts at President Goodluck Jonathan. His response was “I gave him a month break”.
This response goes to show how self-conceited El-Rufai, who described himself as an accidental public servant is. Sure, he was, and still is, an accident. He wants everyone to believe that he is truly, and genuinely, a nationalist with broader vision for a greater Nigeria. Well, this is a democracy and it is only in Nigeria that something like an el-rufai could happen. In other climes, an accidental public servant who has the sort of record that he brandishes, or tries to hide from the public, will eternally resign to some reclusive lifestyle and not be heard again. But is a Nigeria where men live without honour but with shame, an el-rufai, is seem, by some gullible fellows, as a leading light even with his tainted coat.
I am a northerner and know very well what the elite in the north think of him. Most see him as a turncoat after his romance with Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP soon after his return from what he called self-exile. To properly contextualize el-rufai, one may begin by asking him what crimes chased him into exile? He has been about Nigeria vilifying the memory of President Umaru Yar’Adua and telling tales of how the late president hounded him into exile. But that is his song. He never tires to sing it. And for this reason, he danced on Yar’Adua’s grave, rejoicing on his death, something that our Islamic religion condemns. But is it possible to contemplate Yar’Adua picking up a quarrel against someone whose hands are clean? Is it possible for the government of President Jonathan to rise against me when I have not committed any crime against the state? So, if El-rufai ‘escaped’ to the US because Yar’Adua was after him, it logically concludes that his closet contains some skeletons. So, the man who now presents himself as a saint cannot be entirely clean. He lacks the moral clean-sheet to continue with his campaign of hatred against Jonathan and anything not of the el-rufai stock.
Well, the criminal charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) speaks volumes about why he ran away from Nigeria. It is a pity that the case has progressed rather slowly. He ought to have been serving time in Gashua Prisons by now. All he has to do now is to thank God that Jonathan does not interfere with the work of the judiciary. There are yet a lot of other criminally intended issues around el-rufai as an accident that happened in public service.
El-Rufai hit national consciousness as Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, were he criminally engaged Pentascope to carry out an undertakers role at NITEL. Recently, he has been pontificating of his ‘clean’ role in the engagement of Pentascope. He went as far as blaming then Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, for all the crimes he connived with Pentascope to commit against Nigeria. Somehow, he believes that all Nigerians, except him, suffer amnesia. He believes that everyone has forgotten the furore generated by the engagement of Pentascope. He also believes that we all no longer remember that Pentascope was his baby with no previous experience in telecom management. He tends to delude himself with the argument that then vice President was at the head of the privatisation exercise. Even if he was, as DG, BPE el-rufai was in a position to object to the engagement of Pentascope. He did not object to Pentascope. He did not write anyone stating reasons Pentascope ought not to be engaged. Rather, he danced around BPE headquarters with officials of Pentascope and handed NITEL over to them to the detriment of Nigeria. Logically speaking, by acting the way he did on the Pentascope deal, el-rufai was criminally complicit. He must have harboured criminal intentions in pulling the deal through. I am happy that former managers of NITEL had asked him to shut his mouth. At a point, his pontifications on the Pentascope deal became so nauseating that I wondered why the guy lies like kids. In the end, he made Nigeria to lose about N40 billion to Pentascope. And NITEL died.
Interesting enough, at the time he was DG at BPE, el-rufai was a publicly acclaimed follower of Atiku. But coming into FCT, he saw where the horny lay and ditched Atiku in a most embarrassing manner just to team up with Obasanjo in the vain believe that Obasanjo would anoint him as successor. The failure of that dream has left him bitter till today. I know he has consistently denied it. But other members of that cabinet also have their views. Perhaps, it was an accident that el-rufai became FCT Minister. Yes, it is agreed that his best moment as minister was the criminal enforcement of the Abuja MasterPlan. El-rufai tells us that he had no option than to enforce the master plan and ensure that Abuja did not become like Lagos. Well, that has, again, always been his chorus. But he will not deny that his main objective was to create space for himself, wives and kids in the master plan. He saw that the plan has no space for him. And since he had no resources to buy choice plot in the city, he had to engage in forceful eviction and destruction of people’s homes, and re-grabbing of same. Through this, his wives got choice plots. His kids also got. And he had more than he needed that he recently put up his Ahmed Musa street home to let. He had always claimed he had only one property in the FCT. So, if the well known Ahmed Musa residence is let out, where did he relocate to? His village?
Besides the crimes of illegally re-allocating and grabbing lands in Abuja, el-rufai made a mess of himself when he employed a girl as a special aide at the FCT ministry, right in his office. At the time, the girl was still a serving youth corper not yet qualified for employment into the civil service. He flouted all known laws regarding employment of corpers and brought her into his office where he criminally paid her more than N1m monthly, at a time when even the Permanent secretary in the ministry did not earn such. The only reason this guy, who abhors due process, could give for that action was to further insult Nigerians with the argument that the girl was of Harvard University. He also publicly admitted that he met her during one of his visits to the US. So, to satisfy his tendencies, Nigeria was made to cough out N1m to keep the girl very close to him. Yet, this guy goes about laundering his image with sanctimonious preachments and arguments on twitter and facebook. He refuses to accept that he abused office by using his position to confer undue advantage on members of his family and liaisons. That is something that insults the sensibility of Nigerians. But he is lucky, it is only in Nigeria.
I think the only luck el-rufai actually has is that Nigeria is not a country that is known to have severely punished public officers who abused office. But, since the EFCC case against him is not yet over, we may not totally give it up. The doors of jail are still beckoning. Perhaps, his twitter and facebook activism are geared towards tying the hands of the judiciary on his case. I am sure that his followers, whom he deceives with his air of self-importance, will cry wolf should the courts find him guilty today of crimes he had been charged with. However, fact is, el-rufai has become a nuisance unto society and his family. I am certain he is not the sort of leader Nigerians are looking up to. But, we may just pity, and keep him around, for nuisance value.
I recall that soon after the launch of his book, which by the way, was his next move to make money from members of the public and recoup his purse after being away from public office where money flows without restraints and accountability, his two erstwhile bosses, Obasanjo and Atiku, described contents of the book as lies. To my mind, no one was better placed to summarise el-rufai as a liar like Obasanjo and Atiku. Again, one may want to read the book for nuisance and comic relief, but having been described as a liar, why would one want to spend his money to read a book of lies? It is all in el-rufai’s character to deceive and hood wink. These are traits that stand him out among top politicians in the country. Like I said earlier, his romance with Jonathan and PDP soon after his return from ‘self-exile’ was in the bid to seek political relevance and retain his hands in public purse just to satisfy his gluttony.
He actively participated in the PDP Reform Forum that worked to eliminate Dr. Okwy Nwodo as PDP chairman under the guise of reforms in the PDP. He did all that in the hope that Jonathan will give him a role in his administration. He had envisaged a return as running mate to Jonathan, or at worst, a minister. But dreams crashed, he switched over to CPC and became Jonathan’s worst foe. Had he been appointed into office by Jonathan, will el-rufai be on the offensive? He rather would have employed his sophistry to sustain argument on the goodness of the Jonathan presidency. That is el-rufai for us. It did, however, not bother him that his erstwhile bosses played a role in his not being given a role in Jonathan’s cabinet. He was presented to Jonathan as a betrayer. It was argued that if he betrayed Atiku despite Atiku’s effort in bringing him to limelight, he will betray anyone, even his wife and kids. And that is a portrait of his character. That is what he is known for. His constant romance with convicted felon, James Ibori, says something of who exactly he is: a crooked leader.
Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
