the FBI’s on-going bribery investigation of the Congressman.
The FBI specifically requested the EFCC to locate and provide documents and information on some
government officials and institutions, private companies and individuals in relation to the activities of
the congressman in promoting US business ventures in Nigeria. The joint ventures between some
Nigerian and US companies were specifically mentioned in the request: I-Gate/NDTV and I-
Gate/Rosecom technology ventures in Nigeria, among others. The request for information revolved
around 31 individuals and companies, including, most prominently, Vice President Atiku Abubakar
and Obasanjo-Atiku confidante, Otunba Oyewole Fashawe.
In compliance with the request, the EFCC undertook the investigation and interviewed as many of the
named persons and companies as possible. In the course of its assignment, the EFCC then stumbled
upon likely violations of Nigerian laws relating particularly to alleged conspiracy, fraudulent
conversion of funds, corrupt practices and money laundering by some Nigerian public officers and
other persons. The relevant information was provided to the US authorities and a comprehensive
report submitted to President Obasanjo.
The EFCC report, dated 24th August 2006, identified several persons who may have violated various
laws. Obasanjo therefore decided to establish an Administrative Panel of Inquiry to review the EFCC
report and make recommendations for the Federal Executive Council to decide on next steps. The
panel was chaired by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo,
with me, Otunba Bamidele Dada, Minister of State – Agriculture, Major-General Abdullahi Sarki
Mukhtar (Rtd) – National Security Adviser, and Oby Ezekwesili, Minister of Education as members.
The panel’s secretariat and meeting venues were the NSA’s secure offices and facilities.
We were empowered to interview anyone concerned if necessary and request for more information
from any quarter to enable the discharge of the administrative nature of its mandate. In this regard,
Obasanjo voluntarily provided hitherto classified copies of correspondence exchanged between
himself and Congressman William Jefferson to assist the panel. The panel was given one week to
submit its report, but this was extended to allow time to undertake a thorough review of the Report
and other supporting documents as well as meet with key individuals. We re-invited several of the
people mentioned in the EFCC report and visited Atiku in his office to ask questions that may
exonerate him and others associated with him, of the indictments in the EFCC report which have been
extensively documented in the ensuing media war between Obasanjo and Atiku, culminating in public
hearings by an Ad-Hoc Senate Committee and litigation up to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. I will
focus on what we essentially found in the course of our panel’s assignment.
The PTDF was established in 1973, for the sole objective of building capacity in the petroleum
industry through manpower training in engineering, geology, science and management. Atiku
Abubakar supervised the activities of the PTDF and inaugurated its Interim Management Committee
in September 2000, and gave approvals for the management and expenditure of its funds, and must
therefore take primary responsibility for whatever may have gone awry.
Of the $125 million approved for the PTDF in 2003, Atiku instructed the fund to deposit $10 million
into Trans International Bank. The balance of $115 million, he instructed, should be placed in Mike
Adenuga’s Equatorial Trust Bank Ltd. The vice president was unusually detailed in his involvement,
instructing further that out of the deposit in Adenuga’s bank, $100 million should be converted to
Naira at ₦ 128 to $1 (but not sold through the Central Bank ) and the proceeds invested under Term
Deposit at 14% interest per annum. In October 2003, Atiku instructed the Accountant-General of the
Federation to release another $20 million to the PTDF, without the consent of the president or the
approval of the FEC. These decisions became intertwined with the joint ventures between NDTV and
I-Gate, and linked to the Jefferson investigation for various offences in the USA.
Congressman Jefferson promoted I-Gate in Nigeria which sought to do business with two companies
– NDTV, promoted essentially by Otunba Fashawe, and Rosehill owned by Sulayman Yahaya. What
EFCC concluded from its investigation was that funds meant for training manpower for the petroleum
industry, provided to PTDF by the Federal Government, were not being used for that purpose.
Instead, some of the monies were deposited in favoured banks that were not AAA-rated, at lower-
than-market rates of interest, while the banks granted unsecured loans to NDTV, Otunba Fashawe and
other companies under his control. The EFCC also attempted to establish business links between
Otunba Fashawe, Atiku and Mike Adenuga’s Globacom, which our panel thought needed further
clarification and confirmation. We submitted our report to Obasanjo which essentially held Atiku
responsible for unauthorized accretions to the Fund, mismanagement of monies since the deposit in
TIB was lost, while monetary losses were incurred through agreeing to lower-than-market interest
rates and exchange rate conversions for the balance of the funds.
Atiku fought back the Nigerian way, which essentially is not to deny having done something wrong but
claim ‘selective targeting’ – “I am not the only one doing it, Obasanjo was involved too” was his
message in the local media. Atiku even hired an expensive international media team from the US--
Frank Mankiewicz, Ed Weidenfeld, Craig Smith and Paul Clark-- to schedule interviews with leading
international news-magazines to spin his message with the objective of emerging from it as the
democrat, anti-Third Term champion and Obasanjo’s victim. The highly politicized and divisive
public hearings that followed in the Senate ended up damaging both Atiku and Obasanjo, and
widening the gulf between them. An initiative of Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim, Dr. Usman Bugaje, Nuhu
Ribadu, Frank Nweke and I to work out a truce and reconcile the two leaders around October 2006
fell through after a second meeting in my official residence with former minister and Atiku loyalist,
Yomi Edu leading their team. Atiku ended up decamping from the PDP to the Action Congress and
running for president on its platform in 2007. Less than three years after these blow-outs, Atiku went
to Abeokuta to reconcile with Obasanjo and returned to the ruling PDP!
Winding down
The sensational stories that receive the most publicity are rarely the stuff that effective public service
is made of; indeed, if public service is practised correctly, it should rarely even make the news. More
important than specific acts that I take pride in, though, is the feedback that I get from the public. Even
today, people in Abuja recognize me and remember the things we did as an administration and they
come up and thank me, which really means a lot. There was a clear sign of someone in charge, and
we took care of business, we managed the city – it worked. There was order, orderliness and rule
compliance, generally, in every sphere. We did that by being resolute and taking some painful
decisions and treating everyone equally. We did not care who you were, if you violated any
regulation or broke the
law, we sanctioned you. Nobody could accuse us of anything else.
Minimizing discretion and focusing on outcomes and results rather than processes and procedures –
this was the guiding philosophy in everything we did, from selling Federal Government houses to
reforming the public service to computerizing the land registry to introducing e-government in FCT,
particularly in making land available to every Nigerian that qualified and applied. When I first came
to the FCT, a plot of land in Abuja city centre typically sold for between 30 and 50 million naira (at
the time between $300,000 and $500,000). By the time I left office in 2007, the same piece of land
sold for less than ten million naira (about $100,000) because we made land more easily available to
more people. We nearly eliminated land speculators and middle-men! As minister, I was solely in
control of land in FCT and I could allocate it more or less on a discretionary basis. We allocated a
lot of land to the largest number of applicants in FCT's history. The 11 ministers before me allocated
less than 19,000 plots of land, in about 25 years. In my four years as minister, I approved the
allocation of more than 27,000 plots of land, much more than the 11 preceding ministers put together.
We saw the solution to high land prices as a supply issue, so we just increased the supply, and it
worked!
It was not until about 2006 that people began to see the effects of some of the difficult and often
painful policy decisions we took. As the city improved, FCT staff became more proud and noticeably
began walking around with more of a bounce and swagger. I would like to think that everybody got
credit all around, if the comments from outsiders were anything to go by. I know for a fact that one of
the questions even current FCT employees ask is, ‘why is Abuja not running like before?’ It is nearly
all the same staff there as when we were in charge. So what is the problem? I have a sense that one
problem is that the staff no longer feel protected as they did when we were in charge. They now feel
that if they did their job and it affected a "big man" or they made a genuine mistake, they would be
immediately sacrificed – quite different from our management style. We made a point to never
sacrifice my staff, even when someone did something wrong. I always believed it was better to
protect the staff from the outsider and then discipline the staff internally than to let go any of my staff
or sacrifice them or publicly blame them.
Nowhere is this aspect more vital than in preparing to leave office. Because of the way we worked,
we knew that once I was out and my successor came in, staff who loyally obeyed my directives
would surely face retribution. So as I was winding down my term, I had a number of things to see to,
as I believe that the signals one sends upon exit are just as important as the signals sent upon entry.
Apart from ticking off items from my to-do list, I also tried to get all my aides jobs in the private
sector or other parts of the public sector, because I knew that if they stayed on, their continued
survival would be subject to political forces beyond their control and mine.
Most importantly, I also had to keep an eye on the books and make sure that money did not disappear
because the last days of an administration are when the crazy spending proposals start rolling in.
From January to February, we started slowing down the spending and I wound up leaving behind over
N50 billion in the bank accounts controlled by the FCT –a huge amount of money - for my successor. I
also ordered audits of FCDA, Sales of Houses and all other accounts so that internal control
infractions are identified to guide our successors. Had I done it any other way, I would have been
accused of other crimes in addition to the false and fictitious ones that were subsequently
manufactured against me.
Also important, I had to keep accurate and useful handing over notes, which are basically the outgoing
minister’s briefing to the incoming minister. My handover notes ended up filling 54 bound volumes
and to this day I am not convinced that any of my successors read beyond page one. I do know that
part of the reason the various Senate hearings targeting me had trouble finding anything to pin on me
was because I could refer to my detailed handing over notes - and they were too lazy to read them and
could therefore nor contradict them.
Finally, as far as the discussion of Abuja as a laboratory for economic reform goes, I would cap this
off with what many consider a heretical statement but I say it with confidence because I ran a city:
rural development is an oxymoron because ultimately everyone in the world will live in cities. In my
view, the phrase, ‘rural development’ was crafted to ensure that Africa remained underdeveloped.
We should all work to develop our human settlements into cities and try to get everyone to move to
cities except those who choose to remain in the countryside, or those like farmers whose livelihood is
off the land and the forests.
As of 2005, more than half of the world’s population lived in cities. This is because cities are centres
of economic opportunities, so it stands to reason that most people will naturally gravitate toward
cities. We therefore must find a way to manage cities better. As someone who has run a city, I would
like to think that ultimately all the cities in Nigeria will be like Abuja, or better. We used Abuja as
the laboratory of our economic reforms, so whether it was public service reform or fighting
corruption, or land reforms, we applied all those in Abuja first. We tried to have a city, the only city
in Nigeria that works. We attacked the culture of impunity of our elites. We decided to restore the
master plan of Abuja to the extent we reasonably could, which necessitated taking down buildings.
We carefully selected our first targets – a minister who had violated the rules, a senator, a retired
general and inspector general of police, and we took down their houses, which sent a message that we
were either crazy or for real. Either way, it did not make a difference, the signalling ensured that we
had a city that worked before our four years ran out. This is an accomplishment even our enemies
cannot take away from us.
Chapter Nine
Land Reforms
“In Haiti, untitled rural and urban real estate holdings are together worth
some $5.2 billion. To put that sum in context, it is four times the total of
all the assets of all the legally operating companies in Haiti, nine times
the value of all assets owned by the government, and 158 times the value
of all foreign direct investment in Haiti's recorded history to 1995.”
― Hernando de Soto, ‘The Mystery of Capital’
The responsibility for administering the FCT was, for me personally, an intensely satisfying
experience. Running a territory gives one the opportunity to change it not only physically through
investments in infrastructure, but also through effecting social improvements in the attitudes of people,
security, rule-compliance and human capital formation. Some of these we achieved by studying
problems and attacking the fundamentals - the roots of the problem, the cause of the disease rather
than symptoms. So for instance, instead of ‘fighting corruption’ in the FCT land administration, we
chose to lay foundations to make it more difficult for corruption to happen
or thrive. This we did by
cleaning up and computerizing land administration, increasing the supply of land and making an
example of those employees most notorious for the abuses in land administration.
Background to Land Reforms
Within six weeks of taking over the administration of FCT in September 2003, I briefed the cabinet
on the discovery of widespread forgery of land records, fraud in allocation of land and collection of
land-related revenues. The cabinet observed the need for drastic reforms of the land administration
system in the FCT. Indeed, during the session, the president suggested that we consider the
cancellation of all certificates of occupancy issued in the history of the FCT, with a view to issuing
new and more secure documents as evidence of title to land. The political and economic elite, along
with the bureaucrats, had distorted the land management system so badly, and then taken advantage of
the confusion - anonymity of applicants, using powers of attorney to enable effective transfer of land
titles, and many other legal shenanigans to acquire huge tracts of land for themselves.
We were mindful of the fact that the fundamental problem of the land management system in the FCT
is the reliance on ‘paper-based’ records that were susceptible to manipulation and forgery. We
therefore sought the president’s approval to accelerate the engagement of Julius Berger as lead
consultant for the computerization of the cadastral and land information system of Phase 1 of the
Federal Capital City (FCC). Incidentally, the president had directed that this be done since 2001, at
the cost of about N265 million, but the ministry chose to set up committees to study the issue instead,
and retained two consultants for the purpose. We decided to take decisive action. We first
inaugurated a committee to review previous studies, reports and everything on the subject and
recommend how to computerise and restructure our land title and related documents. The committee
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