The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  Warri and made me chair of it, so I ended up having to make three or four trips to Delta state just to

  meet with the state government and youth organizations to try replicating the job-creation and

  entrepreneurship programmes we introduced in Abuja that spawned many new small businesses and

  thousands of construction-related jobs. The flaw in this presidential initiative was that Abuja was a

  growing city under construction, enjoying inward migration of skilled people, and lots of construction

  workers who had come in looking for work.

  Warri is a much older city, then conflict-ridden without any one in charge, and the youths had a sense

  of entitlement due to oil exploration and production taking place next door to their homes. Obasanjo’s

  stance on it was simply, ‘I want to solve it,’ so we had to go and conduct interviews, engage in

  consultations and studies, and submit a report on how to create jobs when the real problem was an

  overall governance and accountability deficit. Nevertheless, Ibori welcomed the commission and was

  very nice to me. I later learnt that he usually gave cash to visitors like me, but since he knew I would

  not take that, he gave me a beautiful bronze statuette as a gift instead. I never had any relationship or

  disagreements with him and at that point his issues with the EFCC had not yet emerged – he was still

  good friends with Nuhu. His problems started after leaving office, when he lost the immunity from

  prosecution he enjoyed as governor.

  While people thought Obasanjo was preparing me for something, the truth really was that no

  anointment was being contemplated. I knew that I was simply an overworked machine and nothing

  more, because I know my boss very well. The truth also really was that Obasanjo would never even

  in his wildest dreams think of supporting me to be president, largely because he knows that he would

  not be able to control me in that or indeed in any position. If, as president, I were to find that he did

  something seriously wrong, he knows as well as I do that I would not overlook it simply on the basis

  that he used to be my boss. This professional independence and loyalty to principle, I believe, made

  Obasanjo very uncomfortable with me and people like me. My boss is uncomfortable with anyone he

  is not absolutely certain he could control. Unlike others who led him on to believe he could control

  them, I am incapable of pretending to be servile to get ahead. Only focus on work and the results

  constitute my testimonial in any situation, and thus the explanation for the roller coaster relationship I

  had with Obasanjo. He loved the fact that I got difficult jobs done but hated my independence of

  thought and fidelity to principles higher than blind loyalty to him.

  The record of extra-ministerial assignments listed above and the history of my apparent closeness to

  the president neither endeared me to Atiku Abubakar, who was estranged from Obasanjo at the time,

  nor some of my ambitious cabinet colleagues. In the future, the same reasons made it more difficult

  for an insecure Umaru Yar'Adua as president to feel comfortable with me visibly walking around in

  Abuja, and hence the need to cut me to size.

  The final breakfast

  The sentiment of the final breakfast was for the most part upbeat, though it struck me that Obasanjo

  that morning looked like he had grown several years older. He looked as if he was about to face death

  – his skin was sallow and it was very clear that this was difficult for him, like someone in the final

  hours before heading to the electric chair. He did not eat any breakfast, he just had some tea. I never

  thought of losing power as being that painful, but he was visibly pained. He delivered a nice speech

  about how the administration’s success was due to the efforts of some of us, that people abused him

  and said Obasanjo had achieved nothing, yet in the same breath they say Dora Akunyili, El-Rufai,

  Ngozi, Nuhu and Oby had really turned things around in their various areas; he gave a nod to Femi

  Fani-Kayode, the minister of aviation, for ending the series of plane crashes that had afflicted the

  country’s aviation sector; and he said to us that he expected us to remain in the government. Oby had

  left for the World Bank by then, so she was not at that breakfast, and of course Ngozi had already

  been long gone, thanks to the London fiasco. Obasanjo gave the clear impression that he had spoken

  with Umaru Yar’Adua and everyone who wanted to stay in government employment would stay.

  Toward the end of the breakfast, as we were preparing to go home and ready ourselves for the

  inauguration, Obasanjo called Femi Fani-Kayode to stay on for a few minutes after everyone left.

  When Femi joined us at the inauguration, I could see he was upset about something, but he would not

  tell me about the incident until some weeks later. The long and short of this brief meeting was that

  Femi had had an unpleasant encounter with Obasanjo after we left for allegedly refusing to do

  something that Iyabo Obasanjo requested of him as aviation minister..

  That final morning, those two faces of Obasanjo – one in which he was sitting with us, praising

  everyone and being gracious and the other, exacting retribution from one of his cabinet ministers even

  as he was leaving office – was not the first time that I learnt of Obasanjo as being capable of such

  quick changes in demeanour. For a while, I simply thought of this as an isolated incident, but I

  eventually learned that it was more than just an individual thing. It was actually a recurring

  characteristic of such leaders throughout history. However, there were still some other things that had

  to happen before I would understand that. Perhaps, these are some of the lessons and experiences

  Obasanjo thought I needed to understand.

  My Relationship with Yar’adua Pre-Nomination

  Leading up to Umaru’s elevation to the presidency, I would not say we were very close, but we were

  very cordial to each other. Any time he came to Abuja, which was not often - he would send his aide

  for me and I would go visit him at the governor’s guest house, we would have dinner and catch up on

  things. I never went to Katsina just to visit him. In fact, he hosted me only once while he was

  governor. [128] Nevertheless, we always had a decent, professional relationship, sort of a brotherly

  relationship.

  This brotherly relationship went back many years, to when we first met in late 1972. I had just been

  admitted to Barewa College in January of that year and he had just graduated from Barewa a month

  earlier. Even though he had already graduated, since he was the immediate past house captain in my

  hostel – Mallam Smith House - he was liked by everyone, I heard a lot about him. His nickname was

  “Bad Man” – he drank all the time, smoked a lot, was not a strict disciplinarian at all and that was

  why all the students loved him. He was quite bright though, and despite reportedly sleeping away his

  two years of A-Levels and mostly missing classes, he still made good enough grades to be admitted

  into university at a time when most people failed all four A-level papers. During his time in

  secondary school at Keffi and later at Barewa College, he got involved in student politics and

  eventually ended up as president of the Katsina students’ union. [129]

  The reason I got to meet him was because his cousin, Sani Maikudi, a mentor, who later became a

  partner in our consulting f
irm, became my senior guardian in school. While we were at Barewa, Bad

  Man had enrolled at Ahmadu Bello University to study chemistry-education, so Sani used to take me

  along to go visit him during the next two years that Sani was in Barewa. Bad Man was always a quiet

  type of guy, measured with his words and would not really say much unless he was with people he

  knew for a long time. What struck me when we first met was his austere, untidy appearance and the

  debilitating skin disease – some kind of eczema that gave him a blotched, discoloured aspect. I got to

  know him, I concluded that he was very untidy, dirty even, rarely bathing and never caring to ever

  dress neatly.

  It was precisely those characteristics that many of us admired about him because in our minds that

  sort of comportment connoted someone who was down to earth and humble. His father was a first

  republic minister and his brother ended up being the number two man in the Obasanjo military

  government. He came from an important and well known family, but refused to let it get in the way of

  how he wanted to be seen. Because brothers of military governors and heads of state and generals in

  those days drove fancy cars in universities and wore expensive designer clothes, we interpreted

  Umaru’s austere bearing as modesty and humility and it was quite endearing. Those of us from more

  modest backgrounds were always put off by rich boys showing off their family’s money. To meet

  someone who could have done that but chose not to amounted to a breath of fresh air. As a result, I

  always saw him as a much revered older brother and related to him as such. I respected him as much

  as I respected Bashir El-Rufai and Sani Maikudi. All of them were more than brothers to me – they

  were mentors that I never saw as competitors at all.

  Years later, Bashir drew my attention to the relationship between Umaru’s father and our father.

  Apparently, they not only worked in the same ministry but had a student-teacher relationship. The

  letter evidencing this, written by Musa Yar’Adua in 1953 to our father to sympathise with him over

  the loss of some of his cattle, is in Appendix 13

  Umaru was also very shy, particularly with girls, but when he and Turai married, I recall being

  invited to attend the wedding because of my closeness to Sani Maikudi. I did not know this until much

  later in 2007, but at some point around 1997, he and Sani had a bad falling out. Neither Sani nor

  Umaru mentioned the estrangement to me at any time and I maintained my relationship of respect and

  affection for both.

  Knowing Umaru better over time and longer than most people that worked with him as president, I

  was convinced that working with him would damage our cordial relationship. One of Umaru’s basic

  problems was that he was insecure and could therefore be irrational about many things. Part of the

  reason I think he failed as a president was that this deep insecurity prevented him from surrounding

  himself with enough numbers of competent, independently-minded people who could disagree with

  him. This is because good people often have strong opinions and necessarily disagree with others,

  including their leaders. They are naturally confident, outspoken and will not always agree with the

  leader’s views and will say so. Umaru had no tolerance at all for people who argued or disagreed

  with him. Once a person disagreed with Umaru once or twice, that person would never have access to

  him ever again, he just blocked him out. These deep insecurities led to all kinds of things and I think

  maybe Sani took many things for granted that may have led to the falling out.

  Thinking back and recalling that evening in 2006 when Umaru came to my house asking for help – this

  was not a political thing, but just a show of support that he was requesting, which, all things

  considered given our past together, was a totally reasonable thing to do. I even managed to get Nuhu

  to come around and support Umaru’s candidacy in the end, though I do not think Umaru ever really

  forgave Nuhu for that first reaction – first impressions, after all, last forever. In the end, virtually each

  one of us supported Umaru’s candidacy and Obasanjo then established a presidential campaign

  council and then proceeded to appoint all but one of the members of the council. As Obasanjo was the

  one who picked these people, Umaru did not feel it was his campaign council and therefore needed a

  smaller team of his own to be thinking about the campaign. This led to my second meeting with Umaru

  after a dinner in my residence with Tanimu Yakubu in tow. Umaru then asked Bukola Saraki, Aliko

  Dangote, Andy Uba and James Ibori to invite me and Nuhu Ribadu to another “inner circle formation”

  meeting in Andy Uba’s house a couple of weeks later.

  It became clear, at these meetings, that Umaru did not have access to the campaign funds Obasanjo

  was raising purportedly on his behalf. He was finding that he had to hire aircraft to take him to

  various places and he could not pay. He called me and mentioned this, then sent Tanimu to ask for

  financial contribution. We ended up raising N50 million (then about half a million dollars) twice, and

  both times got the money handed over to Tanimu Yakubu in cash.

  There also came a point at which Umaru confided in me that he was not happy with the

  communications strategy that his campaign was implementing and asked for help. I suggested that the

  Yar’Adua team hire a team comprising a British campaign strategist, Nigerian communications

  consultants and an American pollster to review and revamp the Yar’Adua campaign plan. The

  campaign spent some two million pounds sterling to do extensive polling nationally, undertake focus

  group sessions that led to the production of multi-lingual radio jingles, videos and a comprehensive

  campaign strategy for candidate Yar’Adua, all paid for by a friend of mine who still prefers

  anonymity. Apart from the instances when Umaru requested me personally to assist, I did not have any

  hand in the campaign’s strategy, which was neither here nor there as far as I was concerned. My role

  in his presidential campaign, to the extent that I had any, was coming up with the ideas, contacts and

  resources and handing them over to his team, and on one occasion campaigning with him and

  Obasanjo when the campaign team spent the day in Abuja. Given the many other things I had on my

  plate at the time, I was perfectly fine with this level of contribution.

  President-Elect Yar’Adua

  Immediately upon announcing Umaru’s election victory, I congratulated him and informed him of my

  medium-term plans, mainly because I did not want him to offer me a job that I would have to say no

  to. I explained to him that I had a law degree to finish in London followed by attending a graduate

  programme at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

  “But I am going to need you here,” he said.

  “Well, I will be available by phone or email any time you need me but I need to do this,” I

  told him. “This is my life that I have put on hold for nine years.”

  “Mallam Nasir, you know I can’t do this job alone, I need experienced people around me and

  I was relying on you to be there.”

  “Sir, you know I will always be there, just a phone call away. I am available to research and

  write a paper on any problem. Just anything you want as long as I do not have to take a full

  time job.”

  H
e indicated that he did not like this answer, but we agreed to discuss it again when things became

  more settled.

  Two days later, he called with a request to initiate a transition committee to begin planning how he

  would take over and he wanted me to co-chair it along with one other person. He gave me the names

  of those he wanted to be on the committee and we started meeting up. After two or three meetings, I

  noticed that Tanimu Yakubu, who was one of the closest people to Yar’Adua, and Aliyu Modibbo,

  who was supposed to be my co-chair, [130] stopped attending the meetings. Clearly, I concluded,

  Yar'Adua was no longer interested in this transition committee.

  When a new president is elected, many people come to him seeking influence, seeking relevance, and

  expecting a job in the administration. There may have been some people convincing him to set up

  another transition committee without some of us as members. I did not think much of it at the time as I

  had enough other work to do and if Umaru was not interested in what we were doing, we might as

  well get on with our lives. Our committee stopped meeting and eventually I went to see him to discuss

  the matter.

  “Mr. President-elect, it does not seem to me this transition committee is working because your guys

  have been too busy to attend and we cannot do it well without the input of people from your side,” I

  said. “So we will just tidy up whatever we have done and I will hand it over to you and you can

  continue from there.”

  His response was brief and telling – he basically just said that sounded fine and thanks, which

  confirmed to me that this was what he wanted. There was no explanation. We assembled all the

  reports and sent them to him and that was it. This was the first sign that something was amiss.

  Nevertheless, Yar’Adua continued to consult me on other matters including some key appointments.