The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  I. Abumere of the University of Ibadan were engaged to undertake demographic and ecological

  surveys to ascertain the exact number of people to be resettled outside the territory, and determine

  appropriate compensation. However, this policy of total evacuation was shelved, largely because the

  estimated N300 million compensation was deemed unaffordable. General T Y Danjuma, then in

  overall charge of the new capital project, recommended that only original inhabitants living within

  the city footprint – the 250 square kilometres containing phases one to four of the Federal Capital

  City- would be resettled in the future, when required by infrastructure development.

  Original inhabitants living outside the city might choose to remain but would have no indigeneship

  rights because every citizen of Nigeria living in the FCT shall enjoy the equal residency status.

  Consequently, those entitled to resettlement under the revised policy fell into two categories: those

  who had opted to be moved out of the FCT and had received compensation between 1976 and 1978,

  and those who remained but would be resettled within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), outside

  the Federal Capital City (FCC), whenever their places of abode were affected by city development

  projects. We tasked a committee [96] to look at all the locations where infrastructure projects have

  been delayed by resettlement issues, and recommend immediate remedial actions. The committee was

  also required to revise and update resettlement and compensation fees that had been unaffected by

  inflation since 1979. The committee submitted its report in April 2004, once community leaders were

  finally persuaded to sign on to it. Implementing the recommendations was not without difficulties.

  Due to incessant obstructions created by two recalcitrant local chiefs-- the District Head of

  Galadimawa and Sapeyi of Garki-- I took the unprecedented decision to invoke the powers I had

  under the act guiding the appointment of local chiefs and deposed them both, in December 2005. The

  Sapeyi was exiled to Abaji for a period. We reversed the decision in 2007, after repeated

  representations by other traditional rulers and assurances of good behaviour on the Sapeyi’s part.

  Infrastructure development projects in the FCT proceeded unhindered as soon as we took the

  deposition decision.

  Satellite Towns Development

  A major recommendation in the FCT Regional Development Plan Report was the establishment of

  satellite towns to serve as “growth poles.” The Abuja Master Plan had envisaged that the informal

  sector would, by the year 2000, make up 43% of the total labour force in the City proper. It was,

  therefore, envisaged that the City’s support population would have to be accommodated in specially

  designated Satellite Towns of about 100,000 – 150,000 population each. In order to reduce the

  pressure on the city and ensure compliance with the Master Plan and the Regional Development Plan,

  the creation of new Satellite Towns and upgrading of existing ones had become imperative by July

  2003. Some of these Satellite Towns could serve as resettlement centres for the indigenous

  population to be relocated from areas covered by the FCC Master Plan.

  We sought Obasanjo’s approval (and budgetary support) to establish new Satellite Towns, in Kuje,

  Gwagwalada and other areas. We also sought approval to upgrade some existing settlements to

  Satellite Towns, considering such factors as proximity to existing infrastructure, such as

  transportation.

  The Satellite Towns Development Agency received unprecedented support and attention from

  President Obasanjo and I, and had an exemplary team headed by Buhari Dikko, who was one of

  FCDA’s pioneer civil engineers. Ongoing road improvement projects were concluded.

  We also made progress in infrastructure development within the City and rest of the territory. We

  were especially determined to improve the environment, completing sewage treatment plants,

  landfills, and water treatment plants, in addition to clearing the landscape of thousands of broken-

  down vehicles and other eyesores.

  We improved and expanded public buildings and facilities as well. Notable examples include new

  administrative wings for the National Assembly, additions to the Federal Secretariat complex, and

  commenced work on the showcase Millennium Tower.

  As was typical, many of these projects faced headwinds from entrenched interests. A case in point

  was the permanent building of the FCT Administration, which was planned for a plot in the Central

  Area that was illegally occupied by Bulet Construction Company. After we ejected Bulet, the

  company obtained a court order followed by a judgment that found a way to justify the continued

  illegal occupation, even in the absence of any title to the land. Bulet, a company owned by Ismaila Isa

  Funtua, a politician, businessman and friend of the powerful, had been given a licence to occupy the

  plot as a temporary site office for the construction of the neighbouring federal secretariat building.

  But the license had long expired. Funtua had approached me in my first month as minister,

  complaining that the permanent secretary, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, had refused to “regularize” the

  allocation of the plot to him. But I established, upon investigation, that the plot was in fact earmarked

  for the FCT building in the Abuja Master Plan. What was more, no private organization could be

  allocated a plot in the Ministries Zone. Though I patiently explained this to Funtua, the logic of the

  Master Plan meant nothing to him as the ultimate Nigerian big man. One of our judges, in his infinite

  wisdom, has allowed him to so far have his way, and the FCT Administration building remains

  unbuilt.

  Abuja Technology Village

  The Abuja Technology Village, or ATV, was a Federal Government-promoted project. The FCT was

  mandated to anchor it in order for it to achieve speedy implementation. The project was aimed at

  establishing Nigeria as the technology hub for Africa, and was billed as a free trade zone. The vision

  of the ATV was to establish a platform for creating a sustainable knowledge economy.

  We commissioned Aim Consultants in 2005 to prepare the master plan and urban design of the

  village, as Nigeria’s first technology park, our future Silicon Valley. An excited President Obasanjo

  named it Abuja Technology Village. We awarded the infrastructure development contract for the

  construction of the ATV to Gilmor Nigeria Ltd., and persuaded the Nelson Mandela Institute to locate

  the first campus of the African University of Science and Technology within the village.

  All the major global technology companies with presence in Nigeria, such as HP, Cisco Systems,

  IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, committed to locating their operations in the ATV, while Nigerian

  companies like Zinox Systems and SocketWorks confirmed their interest to do the same. The ATV

  project was still ongoing, had acquired “Free Zone” status and attracted massive private sector

  interest by the time we left office. We explored the promotion of a 600MW independent power plant

  for Abuja to ensure stable power supply to the ATV and accommodate the typically voracious

  appetite of tech firms for power. A state-owned Chinese engineering company, CGC, expressed

  willingness to finance, design and construct a gas pipeline from Ajaokuta to Abuja, to supply the

  power plant. We began discussions with three c
ompanies to go into joint venture with Abuja

  Investment Company Ltd., to implement these projects, but did not conclude the arrangements by the

  time we left office. Luckily, after we left office, Yar’Adua’s economic adviser Tanimu Yakubu,

  focused his interest and high-level attention on the ATV, ensuring it was not left to wither on the vine,

  like many of our other initiatives. The ATV may well be a reality sometime soon, under the able

  leadership of my former special assistant, Hauwa Yabani. [97]

  The technology village currently hosts the African University of Science and Techonology, an

  initiative of African diaspora academics under the aegis of the Nelson Mandela Institute. Taking a cue

  from MIT as well as the Indian Institute of Technology, their vision is to establish four campuses of

  excellence for the AUST to train high quality engineers, scientists and humanities professionals. The

  initiative enjoyed the early support of the World Bank, African Development Bank, the UK

  government, and the European Union. Dr. Frannie Leautier, then Director of the World Bank Institute

  who now runs the Africa Capacity Development Foundation out of Harare, was the lead promoter of

  the project. She coordinated bilateral and multilateral efforts to realize the project. Abuja competed

  with Tanzania to host the first campus and won, by offering serviced land along the Airport Road,

  twice the size offered by the Tanzanian government.

  However, the promised support from the bilateral and multilateral sources was late in materialising,

  so the FCT Administration and agencies of the Federal Government bore most of the set-up costs of

  the university. In 2005, the FCTA spent over N100 million for offices, furniture and equipment,

  vehicles, staff salaries and consulting fees for the planning and design of the university. Another N200

  million was expended by the FCTA in 2006 for staff salaries, various consultancy fees for

  environmental impact, topographical survey, hydrological studies, architectural designs, land

  clearance and fencing, and the meetings and conferences of the African diaspora professors that came

  to Abuja for the project’s ground breaking ceremony in December 2006. FCTA also signed an

  infrastructure construction contract with Gilmor Nigeria Ltd., for the ATV, which included the AUST.

  We relocated the Chinese construction giant, CCECC, from the proposed AUST site, but persuaded

  the company to leave behind their buildings for the immediate take-off of the university.

  The FCTA, therefore, provided virtually all the initial setup funding. The government-funded

  Petroleum Technology Development Fund, or PTDF, then headed by Adamu Maina Waziri, granted

  $25 million to build the Gulf of Guinea Institute (G2i) within the AUST campus. The institute is to

  serve as a continental centre of excellence in petroleum engineering and related technologies. The

  first set of masters degree students of the AUST, drawn from several African countries, enrolled in

  September 2008. The university has proudly graduated at least three sets of masters’ degree holders

  from several African countries by 2011.

  The Abuja Transportation Plan

  Similarly determined efforts went into tackling transportation challenges. We reviewed and updated

  the Abuja Transportation Plan to include new settlements like Nyanya and Karu whose unexpected

  growth and rapid urbanization were not envisaged by the Master Plan. This led to the creation of a

  bus system comprising three integrated lines and concessions - National Unity Line (Green) FCT’s

  Abuja Mass Transit Company (Red) and Sonic Global Company[98] (Yellow) - to connect parts of

  the city, satellite towns and major population centres within and outside the FCT. We granted the

  companies land for their maintenance and parking terminals, obtained import duty, VAT and tax

  waivers from the Federal Ministry of Finance for them, encouraged banks doing business with FCTA

  to finance the acquisition of their fleet. Our plan was for the bus operators to continuously expand

  their fleets so as to reduce bus-waiting time to not more than 5 minutes anywhere in Abuja by

  December 2009. The once ubiquitous ‘El–Rufai’ Cabs - a territory-wide taxi system using the London

  Taxis and Dark Green Peugeot 307 as the two acceptable prototypes also came out of this effort. The

  goal was to get all the rickety second hand taxis off Abuja’s streets, inculcating the habit of hire

  purchase and deferred payment acquisition, making regular payments and encouraging

  entrepreneurship. This we achieved by securing import duty, VAT and tax waivers for Peugeot

  Automobile Nigeria, Kaduna, thereby enabling the Abuja Leasing Company Ltd (a public-private

  partnership with a handful of commercial banks) to lease the cars to owner-drivers upon the payment

  of three hundred thousand naira – about the price of a second-hand vehicle. We also brought in safety

  training and street location experts from London Taxis to train the first batch of drivers in safety,

  security, locating street names and numbers, and customer service, at our own cost and only those

  who were fluent in English, and had passed the final test were allowed to acquire or drive the cabs.

  Finally, we also embarked on the establishment of a light rail network, which groundbreaking was

  presided over by President Obasanjo in the waning days of his administration, in May 2007. When

  operational, the Abuja Metro system was to be powered initially by diesel, convertible later to

  electricity, with the capacity to transport about 20,000 passengers per hour at very affordable prices.

  Had the project been allowed to proceed, it would have been completed before December 2010, and

  Abuja would have joined over 100 cities with metro systems including London (which commissioned

  its Underground in 1863) and Cairo in Africa (that commissioned its own system in 1987).

  Regrettably, the project later fell victim to a particularly destructive Nigerian disease, the successor

  abandonment syndrome, as a result of which the light rail network project remains “ongoing”.

  Human Capital Development

  The Education Secretariat was established in June 2004 as one of the mandate secretariats in line

  with FCT’s administrative reform programmes. This was informed by education being an instrument

  of economic, scientific, technological, social and political empowerment for the individual and the

  society at large. We wanted to ensure the provision of qualitative, accessible and affordable

  education to the entire inhabitants of the FCT at primary, post-primary and tertiary levels.

  The FCT education secretariat achieved a lot under its two secretaries between 2004 and 2007. We

  increased budgetary provision for education from 5% of FCTA’s total budget in 2003 to about 20%

  by 2007; a total of 250 new classrooms were constructed between 2004 and 2005, with hundreds

  more under construction by 2007; 987 sets of classroom furniture were provided for 237 primary

  schools in all the FCT area councils; and 145 classrooms were constructed in 75 primary schools in

  the FCT area councils

  We also rehabilitated 462 classrooms in 75 primary schools and introduced a school shuttle bus

  system to convey uniformed students to and from schools; not only to provide succour to those who

  could not afford the high transport fare, but to also check cases of truancy and lateness on excuses of

  transportation difficulties. We acquired buses for senior secondary schools in th
e FCT to ease the

  transportation difficulties of staff and students who needed buses for academic and recreational

  activities such as excursions, inter school academic and sporting competitions and for emergencies.

  We equipped schools with computers to promote information and communication technology (ICT)

  and expose students to modern trends in teaching and learning in order to stimulate their urge to

  engage in research. This was actualized through collaboration with Intel Corporation, World

  Computer Exchange Programme and Professor Nicholas Negroponte of MIT, and sponsorships from

  MTN, Zenith Bank and the Education Tax Fund.

  We improved the quality and quantity of teaching staff throughout the FCT by recruiting 700 qualified

  UBE teachers and 590 teachers in key subject areas in the senior secondary schools. An additional

  1,200 teachers were contributed by the Federal Ministry of Education through its Federal Teachers’

  Scheme as we sought to reduce the student-teacher ratio to a reasonable level. In terms of welfare,

  teachers enjoyed a 25% increase in pay compared to 15% for other public servants in the FCT

  engaged in non-teaching activities and an award system for students and school teachers was

  instituted in the 2006-2007 academic year with the star prize of a brand new car for the winner. This

  was an effort to encourage students to strive for good results. Teachers, principals and staff of the

  education secretariat were also recognised for exceptional performance. We also trained teachers on

  modern teaching methods, principals and vice principals on management principles and non-teaching

  support staff on relevant ancillary competencies

  Finally, we had an education sector plan (ESP) prepared in collaboration with the World Bank and

  the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). The ESP was addressing

  the gaps in the FCT education sector and budgeting for a 10-year development plan. The Education