The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  indefensible and publicly unpopular. But we must position ourselves in such a way that we are trusted

  enough to have some information about what the protagonists are up to, yet not be engaged so that we

  can pass on that information to the opposition groups that will be organizing to fight it openly and

  frontally.” I was confident there would be such groups in the legislature, civil society and the media

  for us to engage with in the near future.

  In the end, Ngozi and the rest of the core team were persuaded and that was what we decided to do.

  We all focused on our jobs, maintained low profiles and kept our mouths shut for the time being. Of

  course, we were not the only faction in the government against the idea of a third term, and in due

  course we wound up collaborating with opposition political parties and the leadership of the

  National Assembly to ensure that the effort was in the end dramatically defeated. That story is much

  longer and I will return to it later in this book, but suffice it to say here that by the time we had enough

  evidence from the opposition that they were set to defeat the third term amendment vote in the

  National Assembly, we took our evidence as a group to the president's chief of staff. On that

  Wednesday evening, on the 10th of May, 2006, Ngozi led us - Oby, Nuhu, Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, (who

  became FCT minister after I left office in 2007) and I, to see General Abdullahi Mohammed in his

  official home in Asokoro District of Abuja.

  “Third term – Obasanjo is still denying the existence of a third term project,” we said to him.

  “Yes, but you all know there is,” he replied. At that point, the merits of a constitutional amendment

  were already being debated in the legislature. We told the chief of staff that the entire bill was certain

  to be defeated and in our view the president should get the National Assembly to withdraw this term

  limit amendment from the debate and let him preserve some semblance of his stature and honour.

  Otherwise, by the time it is defeated after protracted acrimony and division even within the ruling

  party, he would be weakened as president that he would lack the moral authority to influence the

  choice of a successor. The political ball would effectively be out of his hands. We were concerned

  about that because we believed then that Obasanjo would always make certain decisions and choices

  affecting the country based on overriding national interest. In spite of the misjudgement evident in the

  third term debacle, we still trusted his judgment on succession.

  We suggested to the chief of staff that he should lead us to go and confront Obasanjo and persuade

  him that this constitutional amendment business had to stop. The chief of staff listened carefully,

  sympathized with us, but did not want to do it that way though. “Give me the documentation you have

  and I will talk to the president myself. I would not want to go with you because he has consistently

  denied to me that there was a third term, so how can I lead you guys to go and confront him on third

  term? Let me go and see him, just two old soldiers talking.” Till today, the chief of staff never told

  anyone of us how the conversation with Obasanjo went that night, as he never got back to us on what

  transpired. Subsequent events made that unnecessary.

  The following morning Obasanjo called Oby and Ngozi aside directly and dressed them down. They

  had gone to worship, as usual, at the morning church service at the State House chapel. “You are of

  weak faith and do not believe we can build a modern Nigeria. We are going to achieve what you do

  not think is possible”, was his refrain, still confident that his third term was going to happen. I got my

  own call later in the day.

  “I hear that you are now the leader of the coup plotters,” he said.

  “Coup plotters, Mr President?”

  “Yes, you went to see the chief of staff.”

  “Yes Mr President, we went to see chief of staff to save the government which you head.”

  “Save the government! Save me from what?”

  “Save us all - the administration from humiliation and defeat. This constitutional amendment thing is

  not going anywhere, sir, it is better to get out of it than wait for it to be thrown out. It will be a

  blemish on our administration.” He was travelling out of the country that day.

  “When I come back, you and I are going to sit down and you will see that you are wrong.”

  Clearly, he still had the delusion that the amendment would succeed. Two days after our nocturnal

  visit to Obasanjo’s chief of staff, it made the front page of Leadership newspaper, a leading anti-

  Third Term paper of the time. The story filed by Chuks Ohuegbe was headlined - "Economic Team

  threatens to resign" (Leadership #143, Friday, 12th May 2006). We were all shocked at how the story

  got out. Leadership's publisher Sam Nda Isaiah, my good friend, subsequently told me that Chuks

  never revealed his source to him, but was certain of its reliability. I still wonder who amongst us

  leaked details of our top-secret visit.

  As we all know now, the amendments failed in the Senate on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 while Obasanjo

  was away, [13] so there was nothing more to discuss on his return. It was a very challenging period

  for us all and quite a distraction from the work we were all trying to do. Furthermore, because we

  had shown our hands, particularly in my own case (and Oby) in direct conversations with Obasanjo

  much more than with other people, Obasanjo knew exactly what we thought about the adventure. As a

  result, I think this affected our relationship for the rest of our tenure, and to this day I know it is

  probably something he holds against us but cannot even mention it.

  He would feel that because he was like a father to us all, consistently stood by us, and was so good to

  us, we should have just unquestionably signed on to the Third Term project. I guess that is how old

  soldiers think. This is what I now understand to be his definition of loyalty – loyalty means – ‘follow

  me blindly, without regard to national interest or questions of constitutional order.’ I have come to

  realize that many leaders think and act like that. Loyalty is personal, not national. I do not agree with

  this interpretation.

  Taking the Good with the Bad

  ‘No third term – no Nigeria.’

  This phrase – Nuhu and at least one other person still serving in the federal government had heard

  similar words too in separate conversations with Obasanjo. In retrospect now, it seems a grandiose

  statement, outlandish, crude, arrogant, and primitive even. For in the end, there was no third term and

  yet, here we are. We have never had this uninterrupted length of time in our history as a democracy –

  Nigeria is over 50 years old but the last 13 years have been our longest stretch as a democracy.

  Among the many things that we learned from the failed third term effort, one of the most significant to

  me is that democracy was to some degree working in Nigeria. If we had continued along these lines

  with a few adjustments here and there, things would have got better, even with all the problems we

  have had. But looking at the last 13 years and the opportunities we have had, I am not sure if we have

  made the best use of our resources

  The fact that Obasanjo did not even explore the idea of grooming a suitable successor speaks of the

  depths of his delusion. We later learnt that the mere sugges
tion to have a Plan B, in case of failure by

  the Third Term protagonists, to him amounted to insubordination, because as a general planning for

  battle, he intended to win! No one amongst some of us dared broach the subject of succession with

  him for fear of being accused of inordinate ambition, even after the Third Term project collapsed.

  Whether his handpicked successor should have been any member of the economic team, a state

  governor, national legislator, business-person or someone else was hardly the point; out of a country

  of 140 million people then, surely there must have been someone or two suitable to groom, for the

  nation to choose from. Obasanjo deprived the ordinary Nigerian of that luxury of making a real

  choice, even one so severely limited.

  In the end, President Obasanjo was our boss, remained a leader that had done a lot for us, our careers

  and Nigeria. This is why we were so disappointed by his bid for a third term. Personally, I took an

  oath of office which required my loyalty to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the law and the

  Constitution. I think my loyalty ends where any assault on the national interest, our constitution and

  our laws begins. I cannot, out of loyalty to a friend or even to a mentor, break the law or violate the

  constitution or do something that in my assessment could be wrong, illegal and against Nigeria’s

  overall interest. The Third Term project fell within that class of situations.

  Honestly, what is the difference between an Obasanjo third term and a sit-tight Mugabe? Technically

  speaking, the difference is three terms versus five. However, you never know what happens when you

  open the door too wide. This to me is the tragedy of Obasanjo’s legacy, the contrast between the

  derision with which he was held immediately after leaving office partly as a result of attempting to

  get a third term, with the man who first won international acclaim for being the first military ruler in

  Africa to voluntarily cede power to a democratic process.

  Many would like to think that had they been in Obasanjo’s shoes, they would have been more

  reasonable but the truth of it is that they do not know for sure. One does not know what it is like to

  serve as president for two terms in a country like Nigeria; to anyone else who likewise has never had

  that experience and yet is quick to disparage Obasanjo; I would say simply that you cannot judge a

  man until you walk in his shoes.

  So I stop short of judging Obasanjo – believe it or not, I still consider him an elder and a mentor,

  albeit a complicated one – but we all remain disappointed at the blemish our administration got by the

  pursuit of the tenure extension, and the consequences of what has turned out to be poor outcomes

  resulting from his personal choice of successors. The very notion of thinking that no third term means

  the end of Nigeria seems to suggest that he considered himself more important than Nigeria. It was a

  breath-taking realization: all his decisions and actions since that fateful evening indicated to me that

  he believed that Nigeria was a creation of nature for him to use at will, that wherever and whenever

  the narrow interest of Obasanjo and the broad interests of Nigeria conflicted, Obasanjo’s preferences

  must trump Nigeria’s interest. One still does not know how he arrived at that conclusion, but it was

  quite clear to me that this was what he had come to believe, and perhaps what he still thinks.

  To me, if one chooses or agrees to be part of a group, whether that group is a family, a team, a

  company or a country, one’s primary loyalty ultimately should be to the group. Apart from obedience

  to God, my primary loyalty is to Nigeria before anyone and anything else. When I joined the public

  service, I took an oath of office to be loyal to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its Constitution and

  there was never anything in the oath of offices I held that required any personal loyalty to any person,

  the president included. I believe in this doctrine and I have practised it in my relationships with

  groups that I work with, so to me, it is a no-brainer choosing which way to go at any point of conflict.

  However, my guess is that for many people like Obasanjo, loyalty means you do everything that they

  want or demand; that you are on their side all the time with little regard to other objective values.

  Accordingly, Obasanjo and his capricious views and opinions are the benchmarks of one's patriotism.

  The constitution and the law are the secondary, not the primary standards. I do not agree with this

  view and I never will. Whenever I felt this was at issue, I disagreed with him, sometimes openly in

  cabinet and other meetings, and most other times, behind closed doors.

  In spite of all these deficits, President Obasanjo is an intelligent, hardworking, dedicated and

  competent leader. I consider my experiences working with him, one of the pinnacles of my public

  service career, to be instructive of not just the political realities of Nigeria, but also of the meaning of

  loyalty, of democracy, of development, of success, of failure, and last but not least, the dynamics of

  working in public service in Nigeria today. As I think back to my experiences prior to entering public

  service, I can see that really the lessons I learned early on came to bear consistently and constantly

  since joining the Obasanjo Administration. Only God knows where my experiences and knowledge

  will lead me next, but I am confident that wherever that is, the principles imbibed and the lessons

  learnt from the beginning of my life to date will continue to help me serve Nigeria in the public and

  private realms, with the aim of helping the country realize its full potential.

  The Third Term period was one in which the trajectory of our administration changed for the worse.

  Corruption at the highest level became more overt, impunity escalated, compromise with

  unscrupulous politicians became the order of the day, and the nation’s governance took a turn for the

  worse in many areas culminating in Obasanjo’s choice of successors that have led to the current

  economic and political crises that Nigeria has been thrown into. How we will get out from the long

  shadows cast by Obasanjo’s decisions and actions during this period remains an open-ended issue

  even as I write this.

  However, these thoughts were not in contemplation during the period of navigating through the third

  term debacle. On reflection, it seemed to me that the previous forty years or so of my life amounted to

  little more than preparation for the challenges and triumphs I experienced in public service. Let us

  examine how this happened – starting from my humble beginnings.

  Chapter One

  Humble Origins

  “Genetic inheritance determines a child's abilities and weaknesses. But

  those who raise a child call forth from that matrix the traits and talents

  they consider important.”

  - Emilie Buchwald

  Some people become aware at a very early age what their calling is in life. For better or worse, I

  was never one of those people. When I look back now, though, it strikes me that my awareness of

  public service occurred at a fairly young age, even if I never really considered it significant as an

  event in and of itself until I began to write this book.

  In general, there was always discussion about government when I was growing up (particularly in the

  houses I was brought up), because those who brought me up (my
father, uncle and cousin) were all

  public servants. The twin topics of government and public service were therefore consistently present

  in our household discussions. In the time and place I was born – Daudawa village in Katsina State

  around 1960[14] – peoples’ expectations of life were quite modest.

  Virtually every boy (but excluding most girls, including all my sisters) in the village went to primary

  school but only three or four out of the whole graduating class of about 30 pupils each year would

  pass the National Common Entrance Examination to go to a high school - which at the time would be

  a government college, a provincial secondary school, craft school or teachers' training college in that

  order of preference. Everyone else went to the ministry of agriculture to learn to drive a tractor. Many

  did not even get that kind of job; they just remained in the village and joined their parents as farm

  hands, farmers or traders. The highest ambition anyone had in the village at the time was to be the

  agricultural officer, the most senior government official in Daudawa. Needless to say, it was outside

  the realm of possibility for most people from my village to ever see the regional capital, Kaduna or

  Lagos which was the nation's capital, to say nothing of England, the United States or anywhere else.

  Only a handful in the village had gone to Saudi Arabia for Hajj. My father died without ever being

  able to afford the trip to perform the Hajj or Umra pilgrimage.

  Life then was very simple. We had little crime in the village. There was some inequality, but

  everyone was generally poor. The village head was better off than most. There were a couple of

  traders, - the merchants who had shops and sold groceries and things like that – those were the ’rich’

  people. Then we had the judges and the mallams, the advisers to the ruling class, and then we had the