With his petulance, foul temperament, imprudent conduct and seemingly high propensity to stoke controversy, Nasir El-Rufai has impoverished the sobriety and dignity of the office of Governor of Kaduna State in ways that underscore the travails Nigeria’s democracy has had to endure and how democracy has been bastardised to have a peculiarly Nigerian definition, making a mockery of the beautiful ideal. His recent public shouting match with former President Goodluck Jonathan was another sorry advertisement for Nigeria’s poor politics, which advertises a certain pettiness at the highest level of Nigeria’s leadership. The result is that, once again, in place of lofty ideals or a contention of principles, only the poverty of ideas and absence of grace in the highest realms of governance are on display. For, after all is considered, neither the course of Nigeria’s democracy nor that of graceful purposeful leadership has been served by both men, a tragedy that Nigeria can do without.
It was certainly an unimaginable feat of political miscalculation or error of judgment when El-Rufai fired the opening salvo, levelling accusations of persecution against him by the Jonathan administration. He accused then President Jonathan of ignoring their friendship and trying to jail him because Jonathan thought he was a threat to his second term ambition. In an interview published in The Point, El-Rufai said although Jonathan was his very close friend dating back to when he was deputy governor of Bayelsa State, Jonathan persecuted him because he believed lies told him that he was a threat. “Jonathan was convinced by his own circle too that I was a threat and that if he was going for a second term of office, he had to take me out of the race. And so, Jonathan continued the persecution that Yar’adua started.”
The governor said his persecution started in 2006 when he was in charge at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. “I have been associated with running for President, since 2006, about 15 years. I’ve suffered for this, I’ve even been exiled for it and Jonathan tried to put me in prison for it. My name being mentioned with regard to presidential aspiration has been on since 2006, since I was running the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. People were speculating that the then President Olusegun Obasanjo was preparing to hand over to me. It was part of the reasons I was exiled. Late President Yar’adua was told, according to those around him, that Obasanjo shortlisted two names to succeed him – Yar’Adua’s name and mine. It was totally false. But Yar’adua believed that, and he thought that I was a threat, and all the hullabaloo, lies and persecution that got me exiled for 23 months were as a result of that.”
If Governor El-Rufai’s interview was rife with unsubstantiated claims bad-mouthing Jonathan and his government, the former president has sought to out-do him in villainy. In a strongly-worded response ornamented with bile, vitriol and harmful grandiloquence, Jonathan, through his spokesman, Reno Omokri, dismissed the allegations as untrue and a mere figment of El-Rufai’s imagination, concocted to attract cheap attention and undeserving popularity. Jonathan’s accusatory missive is characterized with false comparisons, seethes with disdain and drips with invectives. The former president accused El-Rufai of lacking the basic attributes of civility in public engagement, saying El-Rufai’s animosity towards him was informed by his decision to pick Namadi Sambo as his vice-president rejecting El-Rufai who had covertly been campaigning for the position.
“After the then President named Mr. Namadi Sambo as his vice president, two days later on May 13, 2010, Mr. El-Rufai became very bitter and made plans to leave the Peoples Democratic Party and began to undermine the Jonathan administration.” According to the statement, “Security reports received by the then president indicated that Mr. El-Rufai was engaged in provocative activities in order to instigate his own arrest, because he felt it would boost his popularity. As such, he made several false and provocative comments that were injurious to Nigeria’s peace, unity and progress, as well as to our good relations with neighboring nations, including that then-President Jonathan founded and funded Boko Haram to the tune of N50 billion to give Islam a bad name, which Mr. el-Rufai made on September 8, 2014. That then President Jonathan had gone to the Republic of Chad to plan Boko Haram attacks with the late President Derby, which he made on November 25, 2014. And that he el-Rufai, along with [now president] Buhari, and several other prominent Nigerians were on a hit list of people to be shot and killed by the Jonathan administration, which he made on January 5, 2014.”
The statement said despite El-Rufai’s anti-government activities, in keeping with the Jonathan doctrine of having no enemy to fight, Jonathan resisted the urge to order El-Rufai’s arrest. The statement quoted excerpts from former President Obasanjo’s book, My Watch Volume 2, wherein OBJ described El-Rufai as a pathological liar and cold-blooded blackmailer: “Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological. Why does he do it? I recognized his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long, but only to Nasir El-Rufai. He barefacedly lied which he did to me against his colleagues and so-called friends. I have heard of how he ruthlessly savaged the reputation of his uncle, a man who was like, in the African setting, his foster father. I shuddered when I heard the story of what he did to his half-brother in the Air Force who is senior to him in age.”
And that was not the end. The statement also quoted another book: “Power, Politics and Death: A Front-row Account of Nigeria Under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua,” written by former THISDAY Editor and spokesman to President Yar’Adua, Segun Adeniyi; who also described El-Rufai as a pathological liar on Page 272 of the book. “Finally, Mr. el-Rufai has been described as ‘a liar’ and fetish person by his former political patron, Alhadji Atiku Abubakar, who he credits with bringing him into the Obasanjo administration. With such testimonials about his character from people with intimate knowledge of his personality, Nigerians should not be surprised about Mr. El-Rufai’s most recent assertions.” Jonathan urged Nigerians to ignore El-Rufai and his rantings, suggesting the former FCT Minister was an ego-offensive narcissist with a flamboyant imaginary self-concept.
If it was bad enough that Jonathan engaged in spewing bile and vitriol; it is worse that he launched bitter diatribe, unbecoming of his exalted status as former president. So in a way, it is right to say, as many have said that Jonathan’s reaction was far beneath his person as a statesman. By the way, even caught in a seemingly public grandstanding, as one who has seen the good, the bad and the ugly of this country, in timing and content, Jonathan’s response is imprudent, almost puerile, by someone who has been endowed by circumstance and history with the attainment of a position that is symbolically above the intrigues in government. As a former head of state, Jonathan has attained a statesmanlike height and pedestal of influence and experience whereby the roadmap for national reconciliation could be crafted from his public utterances. This perception also runs through the international media and has been the strongest point of those who define as impolitic the action of the former President.
However, what is currently at stake in this ugly back-and-forth is power and its use or misuse, decorum and, of course, probity in the public sphere. Firstly, contrary to his mandate of being the chief frontline steward of Kaduna State, El-Rufai has spent more time playing national politics and playing to the gallery, even as Kaduna is on fire. As the chief executive of his state, El-Rufai ought to have exercised restraint and made decorum the watch-word in both his private thoughts and public action. In his public outbursts against Jonathan, he approbated and simultaneously reprobated to the extent that the primacy of his complains were obviated by his flippancy, as he veered off the path of decorum into the quagmire of political grandstanding. In attacking Jonathan, however, El-Rufai might have been right but he did not act wisely. He misread the political climate, to exorcise the ghosts of past events with no redeeming political value and acted imprudently. He appeared too petty with his self-righteous indignation and lost much deserved political capital. His diffident inability to let sleeping dogs lie, speaks to the cantankerous mind of a mischief maker always eager to play up primordial sentiments; which betrays a lack of political sophistication from a man to whom much has been given; and from whom more is expected!
All these notwithstanding, a better conduct is expected of Jonathan at this time when the ship of state appears to be floundering and all appears not to be too well with the polity, symptomized by deep cleavages and political discontent along geopolitical, religious and tribal lines. Intemperate language from high quarters to join issues with political opponents would not avail. Only uncommon restraint and maturity would. As the then sitting vice-president, Jonathan cannot completely extricate himself from the Yar’adua administration whose persecution of El-Rufai is public knowledge. Acting on orders from Abuja, the Nigerian embassy in Washington used its fillers in the US government to pressure Bank of America to close El-Rufai’s account ostensibly because El-Rufai could not provide “proof of earned income” in the USA. Forced to relocate to Dubai after he graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School, El-Rufai could not get his Nigerian passport renewed at any Nigerian oversea mission. He became an international pariah, and could not even travel to attend his daughter’s wedding back home. Whatever his transgression, this shabby treatment of a former minister is unconscionable and Jonathan bears some responsibility.
Also, Jonathan must comport himself in the way other former presidents in and outside Nigeria are known to do. He craves to be seen as a statesman and “father of modern Nigeria” as the first incumbent president in Nigerian history to call and congratulate his opponent after losing re-election. There is really nothing wrong with this aspiration except that this goes with some responsibility. Elderly comportment is one essential attribute which demands some reticence and plenty of caution in every aspect of life. Jonathan’s quest for stature as father of the nation will be helped by a huge dose of circumspection but will be doomed by his renowned temperament and penchant for fights, even fights that make no sense. More important, wayward adults are much more difficult to handle, so it is incumbent on the mass media to be in the vanguard to edify the public space by holding leaders up to the challenge of moral exemplars. A deficit of morals is obvious across the country and now is the time to fight for public decency and decorum.
