The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  paid back until 2006 or thereabouts.

  The irony of the pre-eminent anti-corruption unit on the African continent receiving its take-off

  funding in this manner is not lost on me, but frankly, it was the only way I could think of to help it get

  going. If we had not supported Nuhu the way we did, the entire commission might have died before it

  even got started. When the FATF finally removed Nigeria from its blacklist, it was almost entirely

  due to the EFCC’s efforts. The BPE gave him his first push, and three weeks later Nuhu had shut

  down all the leading foreign letter scam (419) operations in Nigeria. He conducted a coordinated

  arrest of about a dozen well-known leaders of these groups that basically had factories and home-

  offices churning out scam letters. All of a sudden, everybody knew the name Nuhu Ribadu. The EFCC

  was born.

  Money was not the only obstacle Nuhu faced in getting started. Shortly after his appointment, the

  Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun, who was Nuhu’s boss, complained to Obasanjo that

  Nuhu's appointment and rank were inappropriately matched because the EFCC Act made the

  Inspector General of Police (IGP) a member of the board of the EFCC, while Nuhu an officer junior

  to the IGP sat as chair. For the inspector general, that was a problem. His subordinate would sit in a

  Commission board meeting as chairman and, he, the inspector general, would have to seek Nuhu’s

  permission before he could speak. Because of that complaint, the commission’s inauguration by the

  president was postponed and the Inspector General began pushing for Nuhu’s appointment to be

  reversed so that a more senior police officer, a former inspector general of police or someone who

  was retired from the police could be appointed the chairman.

  Nuhu still did not know Obasanjo, but had enough appreciation of power to know that to do his job,

  he needed access to and the confidence of the president. He really needed to get close to Obasanjo.

  He came to me one day early on and told me his new job was already being threatened and he had

  nowhere to go. At that point, the president and I were in the middle of some quarrel, so I could not

  help him out, but did the next best thing. I went to the chief of staff to find out what real threats Nuhu's

  appointment faced and explored what could be done.

  “Well you know, we in the military and the police, we are very hierarchical,” the chief of staff

  said. “We respect hierarchies and it is just not right for an assistant commissioner of police to sit

  as chair of a meeting while the IGP sits as a member.”

  “But that is nonsense,” I said. “What if I or a classmate of Nuhu's from the military or the SSS

  was appointed the chairman of the EFCC. Would Tafa Balogun say he would not sit at the

  meeting?”

  “No.”

  “So it is just in his imagination. Nuhu is not there as a policeman.”

  “What you are saying makes sense but you know what? No one has put it quite in this manner. I

  suggest that you write to the president on this subject. He respects your opinion.”

  The fact was the hierarchy issue was deeper – it was not just the inspector general, but also the

  Director General of the SSS and the heads of virtually all law enforcement agencies that would sit as

  members of the EFCC board with a person they see as junior as chair, which made it a major

  structural problem. Tafa Balogun was the first to make the pitch, but all the other members had the

  same concerns. The BPE then wrote an appeal to Obasanjo making the case for the EFCC board to be

  inaugurated forthwith as its activities would ease the attraction of investors for our privatization

  programme. The letter also addressed the structural issues and made suggestions. The president got

  the Attorney-General to inaugurate the board right away, while addressing the structural issues by

  legislative amendments. We had surmounted the hurdle and Nuhu was grateful he could take off.

  Ultimately the original EFCC Act 2002 was amended in 2004 to provide that ‘a representative of’ the

  inspector general of police and ‘a representative of’ the DG, SSS were to represent the agencies

  rather than the agency heads themselves. The opportunity of the amendment also enabled Nuhu to

  work quietly with Senator Lawal Shuaibu to substantially increase the breadth and scope of EFCC's

  powers to include anti-corruption and miscellaneous offences mandates, and confer the arrest powers

  contained in the Police Act on the EFCC, in addition to its original but narrow money laundering

  mandate.

  “Yallabai, thank you for all these efforts,” he said to me when all the issues had been sorted out.

  “You have been very helpful to me. You know why the inspector general of police was against

  my appointment? Because he is corrupt. He is a very corrupt person and he is scared that if I am

  in this job, I may go after his corruption and money laundering activities. I was not planning to,

  but now I am going to go after him and I am going to put him in jail in the next two years.”

  Within two years, Tafa Balogun was out of his job and in prison, but this could not have happened

  without passing one more crucial hurdle: Nuhu had to get to know and secure the trust and confidence

  of the president. At that point in time, Obasanjo and I were embroiled in the Nigeria Airways saga

  and were hardly speaking, so I gave two suggestions to Nuhu. “First, do not tell Obasanjo that we

  share an office, or that you even know me; second, to get access to him, you have to meet Oby

  Ezekwesili first.” He was thankful and requested an introduction to her. I went to Oby and asked her

  to take Nuhu to meet Obasanjo.

  “I will not meet that man,” she said. “This your Nuhu is Atiku’s man. Atiku got him the job. Atiku

  is dodgy and generally promotes corrupt people in government.”

  Oby despised what she believed Atiku represented. She thought Atiku was a blemish on the

  administration, that he was this untiring customs officer who just collected kickbacks from

  everywhere and thus created a credibility problem for a government that claimed to be serious about

  tackling the menace of systemic corruption.

  “Oby, Nuhu did not get his job via Atiku,” I said.

  “No, Atiku got him his job!”

  “No, he did not and I should know. I went to Atiku to talk about Nuhu getting some money from

  the BPE and Atiku was oblivious to the fact that Nuhu was already in the EFCC. He only knew

  that Nuhu was from his state. But he did not even know about the EFCC so I had to brief him. If

  Atiku had gotten him the job, he would have at least known something about the institution and its

  head. Furthermore, Nuhu did not go to Atiku for the money, he came to me. If he was Atiku's boy,

  he would have just gone to him direct. Nuhu is a good guy - someone we should be working with,

  Oby.”

  After three such conversations, Oby listened to my appeal and finally said, “Ok I will see him, but my

  brother, it is just because of you.”

  Nuhu met with Oby and like with me, made his pitch to her, and Oby, like me, was convinced that the

  man was passionate, genuine, and meant well. That was the beginning of the friendship between Nuhu

  and Oby. She introduced him to Obasanjo and kept facilitating access until he developed his own

  direct relationship with the president. Of course, over time, I made up with Obasanjo so it became a

&nb
sp; team effort. These were the defining moments of our relationship that brought the three of us even

  closer.

  It may come as a surprise to some, but the EFCC is actually the second anti-corruption institution the

  government established. The first was the ICPC, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, and

  frankly, it was generally seen as just a quiet, toothless bulldog. It had been in existence since 2000,

  but had made no major arrests, no prosecutions, nothing up to that point – lots of noise about

  investigations, but no real action. Nuhu came and almost overnight transformed the anti-corruption

  war and its landscape, and the EFCC became synonymous with the fight against corruption.

  The moment he began taking action, he moved out of our offices and received money to buy an office

  building in order to set up his own office. He needed another office for the financial intelligence unit,

  so as FCT Minister some months later, we got him a building as well and assisted him to renovate

  and equip it. Within two years, Nuhu had a much bigger support base partly from the government in

  general due to the higher profile he had created for himself and the EFCC and partly from my

  suggestion to Ngozi that EFCC, rather than ICPC, be included in the membership of the president’s

  economic reform team.

  The idea of the economic team was to have the economic ministers and those running economically-

  related agencies involved in regular brainstorming, coordination and monitoring activities. In

  constituting the team and what agencies to be invited to the table, I argued for including the EFCC

  because everything we were planning to do would not really matter in the eyes of Nigerians and the

  rest of the world unless the public image of Nigeria as a corrupt nation was fixed, or at least be seen

  to be improving. So I introduced Nuhu to the rest of the team and the five of us became what Ngozi

  called the core of the economic team – Ngozi, Oby, Nuhu, Charles Soludo and me. She insisted that

  we meet regularly, support and have absolute trust in each other.

  Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Finance

  The first time I heard of Ngozi was in 1998 when I was advising the Abdulsalami transitional

  administration. I was in Washington DC, attending the World Bank annual meetings with my friend

  and PIMCO colleague, Amah Iwuagwu, when the name was first mentioned. Amah, who went into

  politics and got elected senator in 2003, knew Ngozi from years back when they were students in the

  Boston area at the same time. She was completing her Ph.D at MIT, while he was studying for his

  graduate degree at the Harvard Kennedy School. They got to know each other quite well. He

  mentioned this Nigerian lady who was a director in the World Bank named Ngozi, and he wanted us

  to meet, but we never got to meet her on that occasion.

  I always remembered the name though, because I was impressed at the prospect of a Nigerian rising

  through the ranks to be a director at the World Bank. A year later, when I was running the BPE, I got a

  call from another ex-classmate and ABU alumnus, Dr. Mansur Muhtar, [42] informing me that Ngozi

  was coming to Nigeria to work with Obasanjo for six months. Mansur wanted me to help her settle

  down, and look out for her because she had never worked in Nigeria and never lived in Abuja.

  Before leaving Washington, she had asked Mansur which Nigerian government officials she should

  meet while in Abuja and he mentioned my name, explaining that I was the new head of the BPE.

  When she arrived, she called me and I went to meet her at the Abuja Hilton. She had been granted a

  six-month leave of absence from the World Bank to work with President Obasanjo to do two things:

  draft an economic strategy paper for the new administration and set up a debt management office.

  Obasanjo was very concerned about our Paris Club debt burden and wanted it resolved, so one of the

  recommendations to him from the then president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, was to set up

  a debt management office. Obasanjo requested Wolfensohn to lend him someone who could help do

  this and Wolfensohn offered to send Ngozi free of charge, for up to six months.

  Ngozi and I hit it off straightaway. Ngozi is charming, thoughtful and intelligent. She outlined what she

  came to do in Nigeria, and asked me to help link her up with other "reformers". In consultation with

  Finance Minister Adamu Ciroma, she set up a committee to draft the economic strategy paper and I,

  as the head of the BPE, was a member of the committee, along with Steve Oronsaye and Akin

  Arikawe - future members of our 2003 economic team. We worked on developing the economic

  strategy paper and collaborated on setting up the debt management office, including serving on the top

  management hiring committee. The first head of the debt management office we interviewed and

  recommended to Vice President Atiku Abubakar to appoint was Akin Arikawe. Similar to Nuhu at the

  inception of the EFCC, Akin had no clear budget and no organizational structure and asked the BPE

  to help him with the drafting of an enabling law, design of an organizational structure, and propose

  compensation levels – every agency wanted BPE to be the model to adopt. Since the ministry of

  finance already had a department managing our debt, they transferred the budget of that department to

  the debt management office, so he did not have to take money from the BPE. Dr. Mansur Muhtar was

  hired as one of the directors, effectively Akin's deputy, by our selection committee. Tony Phido, then

  of UBA Trustees, was also offered a directorship position but he declined. Anyway, that was how the

  Debt Management Office began.

  During her six months in Abuja – this was during the 2000-2001 period – Ngozi and I became close

  friends and remained in touch when she went back to Washington. As head of BPE, I was officially

  tagged "Alternate Governor" of the World Bank/IMF group and therefore invited to the World Bank

  annual meetings, so we always had a chance to catch up. Whenever I was in Washington, I would go

  to her house, have dinner, spend time with her children and husband, and we became close family

  friends.

  Just after the 2003 presidential elections, while the nation was still awaiting the results, and the

  president and I were at the height of one of our frequent disagreements about privatisation, Suraj

  Yakubu, another ABU alumnus and friend, who was then the CEO of the Nigerian Investment

  Promotion Commission (NIPC), called on behalf of the president to say that I, along with him (Suraj)

  and Oby Ezekwesili, were to meet with Baroness Lynda Chalker in her capacity as the chair of the

  Presidential International Advisory Council on Investment in London. The purpose was to discuss

  issues related to the reforms that would help attract private sector investments during the second

  Obasanjo term. Baroness Chalker, [43] a close friend of President Obasanjo, was the secretary for

  international development in Margaret Thatcher's government and has considerable international

  clout. Baroness Chalker had already started work in London with a team of consultants preparing an

  economic plan. The president wanted the three of us to join them to have a look at the plan and make

  it ‘more grounded, real and Nigerian.’ Suraj made it clear that this trip was to be secret – we were

  not even to tell our spouses about the purpose of the trip. Indeed, the NIPC covered our travel

  expenses to
conceal the real purpose of the trip from our direct reports (Steve Oronsaye in the case of

  Oby, and VP Atiku Abubakar in mine.)

  We spent two days in London reviewing and editing the plan that Baroness Chalker and her team had

  already prepared and on the third and final day it became clear that while we all liked the plan itself,

  we still had not come up with the appropriate structure and staff needed to implement it. One of the

  main objectives was to have Nigeria’s $30 billion Paris Club debt written off inside of the ensuing

  four years. All of us agreed that the minister of finance, the economic adviser to the president and the

  governor of the central bank of Nigeria would be the three key appointments to ensure that the

  leadership remained focused on achieving the debt write-off. The governor of the central bank had a

  secure tenure that would not be up for renewal until 2005.

  Baroness Chalker first mooted the idea of who she thought should be the finance minister and the

  economic adviser. She added that she had discussions with Obasanjo about me remaining at BPE and

  Obasanjo said he definitely would not have me in BPE during his second term. We found the

  suggestion of Obasanjo appointing the persons Baroness Chalker mentioned near impossibilities and

  told her so. The finance minister is the president’s treasurer and bookkeeper, and therefore should be

  pretty close to the president. Given that Obasanjo did not particularly like the persons mentioned, we

  told the baroness that this was an unlikely outcome. In any case, we argued, the country needed a

  finance minister who had good relations with bilateral and multilateral financial institutions, and I

  suggested that Ngozi should be the natural choice. Until that moment, Lynda had never heard of Ngozi.

  Oby and I gave her a brief biographical profile which excited her beyond belief. Oby then hinted that

  there was already serious lobbying for the position of Minister of Finance and that to ensure we