The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  want anyone to know he used to drink a lot of beer, gin and whisky; he did not want people to know

  he smoked marijuana; he did not want anyone to know he was too shy to talk to girls; he did not want

  anyone to know he had a failed second marriage, that he had never worked a day in his life, that he

  had lived off and been kept by his brother Shehu, that he was a free thinker for a period, and believed

  more in marabouts than his professed Islamic religion. He had conned the whole of Nigeria into

  thinking he was this nice guy who was just really an innocent person while people around him would

  do all kinds of things and he was too sickly and weak to stop them. However, I knew that he was

  behind a lot of evil in the country at the time, and I could tell his story from childhood to sketch a

  character portrait that showed him for what he truly was. That was what I did and he was deeply

  hurt. He was also totally helpless since I was physically out of his reach. He was the all-powerful

  president of Nigeria, yet he could not touch me.

  During his three years as president, Yar’Adua only gave two media interviews: one to the Financial

  Times of London in May 2008, to explain that he was still “planning” a year after after taking office,

  and the other to the Guardian of Lagos in April 2009. The latter was in response to my essay

  published widely in the Nigerian media about him. That was the beginning of his unravelling.

  Upon my eventual return to Nigeria, I confirmed from my media sources that Segun Adeniyi, who was

  Yar’Adua’s special adviser on media and communications, would not comment on the essay. I learnt

  that when the essay was published, Yar’Adua called him and the minister of information, Dora

  Akunyili, and said, “Look, Nasir has published something about me. No one of you should respond,

  no one should comment. What’s going on between me and Nasir is a quarrel between two brothers

  and we will sort it out. It is not your problem, it is my problem.” No one in the government was

  allowed to say anything about this, not even to deny or confirm anything I had written. When one of

  the newspapers called and asked Adeniyi what President Yar’Adua’s response was to this essay, he

  told the reporter, “I have been asked not to comment. You should not even publish ‘no comment’ from

  me.”

  After I completed my programme at Harvard, the situation at home was still not quite right for me to

  return, so I obtained a resident permit to live in Dubai and moved there in July 2009. Since four of my

  children were then studying in the UK, I shuttled between the UAE and UK a lot to see them, and by

  August, all the pages in my first passport had been fully stamped with visas and entry/exit notations.

  This posed a problem when some friends of mine in Austria invited me to visit them because I was

  going to need more space for a new Schengen visa.

  Tampering with my citizenship

  In August of 2009, my battle with the Yar’Adua Administration was in full force: before I left the US,

  I had spoken at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, [137] and written op-eds in Foreign

  Policy. [138] I was speaking from Dubai on various network radio programmes in the US[139] about

  what was happening in Nigeria and Yar’Adua was becoming increasingly agitated because all of a

  sudden everyone knew about him and the not-so-nice things his administration was up to in Nigeria.

  When I went online to apply for my passport renewal, a thought occurred to me for a moment: Could

  these guys refuse to renew this passport? It was just a fleeting thought – if they were to do that, they

  would be playing right into my hands, but I never thought they would be so dumb as to try that. I went

  ahead and applied anyway, paid all the fees online, printed out the receipts and went to the Nigerian

  High Commission in London like every Nigerian would.

  In doing this, I overlooked the assigned appointment date generated by the software, but because the

  high commissioner was someone I knew very well, I thought I should just visit the high commission

  and check whether I could have an appointment date or possibly renew the passport immediately. I

  did not realize the appointment date the system generated for me was there on the printed forms and

  very little flexibility was possible. I went to the high commission, and although the high commissioner

  was not in the office, I met with the head of chancery, a former classmate and friend, Ahmed Umar,

  who referred me to the head of the passport section, also another ABU alumnus and the head of the

  National Intelligence Agency (NIA) desk in London. He looked at my papers and circled the date I

  was supposed to appear for the renewal, still a few days away. I apologised for overlooking that. He

  offered to check the system to see if the details were there anyway so that processing could begin, but

  I told him not to worry, I could come back on the assigned date – I was in no hurry to leave London

  and did not want any preferential treatment. So I left.

  The morning I was to return to the embassy, Ahmed Umar called me very early in the morning. After

  the exchange of pleasantries, Ahmed asked:

  “Nasir you are scheduled to come to the high commission today to renew your passport,

  right?”

  “Yes, I thought I could come around 10 or 11 o’clock. I hope that will be ok.”

  “Yes, this is why I am calling. The high commissioner got a call from Abuja this morning

  instructing that your passport is not to be renewed.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that is great!”

  “No, you did not get what I just said. Your passport is not to be renewed.”

  “No, I heard you right.”

  “So do not bother coming.”

  “No, I will come. You guys will have to deny me the renewal of my passport officially. I

  have an appointment, I will come for my scheduled appointment.”

  “Wow. Ok.”

  I went to the high commission and Ahmed started on about how he did not understand what was going

  on, that a passport is a right and consular services were rights that every Nigerian citizen was entitled

  to and how could they do this?

  “Ahmed, do not worry about it. I was hoping they would do that.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “This now gives me an opportunity to make Yar’Adua look really bad.”

  “How?”

  “Do not worry about it. Let me go see the high commissioner.”

  The high commissioner, Dr. Dalhatu Sarki Tafida, appeared very upset. He had received a call that

  morning from Imoehe, the director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, to the effect that the

  presidency had ordered that my passport was not to be renewed. He asked on what basis they were

  ordering this. After all, I am a Nigerian citizen and the high commissioner’s job is to renew passports

  and offer similar consular services to Nigerian citizens. He asked if the president was depriving me

  of my citizenship. The response was simply that this was the decision of ‘the presidency.’

  “Well, what do you mean by ‘the presidency’?” he asked them.

  The ‘presidency’ is a huge place. That omnibus term could mean anything from the SGF, the sports

  commission, the NSA or the Chief of Staff.

  “Who in the presidency gave the order?”

  The answer was that the instructions came fr
om the national security adviser, Major-General

  Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar. [140] The high commissioner then called the general, who confirmed that

  my passport was not to be renewed because I was going around the world insulting the president and

  thereby making our country look bad. This, according to Mukhtar, was their God-given opportunity to

  ground me in one place.

  The stupidity of this reasoning by Sarki Mukhtar was astonishing. The fact that my passport was full

  did not mean I could not go anywhere, but this was how they saw it – as my friend and former cabinet

  colleague Oby Ezekwesili observed at the time, the IQ of the Yar’Adua Administration was about 30.

  The administration also clearly did not realize that with the Internet, podcasts, videophones and

  satellite TV, I could be located anywhere and continue to effectively attack them. From the high

  commissioner’s end, he explained to them that he did not take instructions from the NIA, that he

  represented the president of Nigeria. So the general told him to call the president directly and hear it

  from the ultimate source. This I learnt was exactly what he did. Yar’Adua’s response was short and

  sharp: my passport was not to be renewed under any circumstance. Umaru added that I should go to

  Obama or Gordon Brown and ask them for a passport since that was where my loyalties lay rather

  than Nigeria. Yar’Adua was clearly under the illusion that he was Nigeria, and attacking him

  amounted to a declaration of war on the country.

  The high commissioner explained all this to me and apologized, but made it clear that his hands were

  tied. He could not go against the direct instructions of Mr. President. He sought my understanding of

  his situation. I understood perfectly, but I had rights to enforce.

  “That is fine. But you know I am going to fight this.”

  “No, why do you like fighting? Just leave it.”

  “No, I am going to fight it.”

  “Ok, but please do not reveal any of these conversations I have had with the national security

  adviser and the president because I am telling you all these in the strictest confidence.

  Otherwise I will lose my job.”

  “I promise not to share this with anyone unless you also get involved further in persecuting

  me,” I responded.

  “Of course not, Nasir. We are brothers.” [141]

  We are brothers – got that?

  I called one of my friends, Sam Nda Isaiah, who publishes the national newspaper Leadership.

  Incidentally, he happened to be in London, so we met up for lunch. He immediately saw the

  newsworthiness of this passport renewal story. The court ruling on the Olisa Agbakoba case, in

  which Agbakoba, who was then president of the Civil Liberties Organization, had his passport seized

  by the state security service, was still fresh in public memory. The Supreme Court had descended on

  the SSS, declaring that the ownership of a Nigerian passport was a right guaranteed under the

  Constitution because it comes with the rights of citizenship and freedom of movement, therefore the

  government cannot under any circumstances or pretext withdraw a person’s passport. Was the

  Yar’Adua Administration really this dumb? Yes.

  Of course the media picked this up. Leadership broke the story and then one or two other newspapers

  picked it up. The Nigerian government in Abuja stayed quiet hoping that it would somehow go away

  but it did not. Their only response was to put pressure on High Commissioner Tafida – ‘my brother’ –

  to publicly say I was not denied the renewal of any passport. What did he do? He granted an

  interview to Daily Trust, a paper then widely known for despising me, claiming I came to the

  embassy and wanted my passport renewed on that day, and that they told me there was a one week

  waiting period but I refused because I wanted to be treated preferentially. In short, El-Rufai was just

  too big to wait his turn like every Nigerian; he wanted to jump the queue. I called Tafida immediately.

  “Mr. High Commissioner, I just read your interview in the Daily Trust.”

  “Yes, I was forced to say that because you have been trying to make the president and

  government look bad on this passport matter.”

  “I did not try to make the government look bad, I tried to make the government look like what

  it truly is – a bad government. It denied me my right as a Nigerian to renew my passport and I

  made it public. If you guys were not proud of your decision, why did you take it?”

  “But you know, you should not do that, Nasir. You are fighting the government.”

  “So you lied. You went to a newspaper and lied. You knew the truth, more than anyone. You

  spoke with Yar’Adua, you spoke with Sarki Mukhtar and you know that you were ordered not

  to renew my passport, yet you lacked the conscience to tell the truth! You lacked the courage

  to even keep quiet! You went on the record and lied against me!”

  “Well I have to do my job. The job of an ambassador is to lie on behalf of his government,”

  Tafida added in self-justification. [142]

  “Thank you very much. So you now know that our deal about not revealing what you

  discussed with Sarki Mukhtar and Yar’Adua is off.”

  “No, no, you can’t do that.”

  “I am going to do it. You know what? I will not say anything which you can deny. I am going

  to get firm evidence to nail you guys. You will be sorry you lied against me.” With that, I

  ended the call, both upset and disappointed with the high commissioner.

  The only question I had to answer then was how do I expose them ‘magisterially’? Was this decision

  taken all orally or is there some written record? Generally, when a competent government wants to do

  some dodgy stuff like denying someone his or her basic rights, it will not keep a written record of it.

  Given the utter brainlessness that the Yar’Adua government had demonstrated up to that point though,

  I knew I had a fighting chance of finding written proof somewhere. So I activated all my contacts in

  Nigeria and asked them to keep an eye out for anything officially written on this matter.

  For two weeks, I got nothing. Then, pay dirt.

  Yet another former classmate of mine in one of the Nigerian embassies called me with what turned

  out to be a major breakthrough.

  “Nasir, I just read a very disturbing cable from the ministry of foreign affairs. It was sent to

  every Nigerian embassy and diplomatic mission and instructed us to deny you and Nuhu

  Ribadu consular services.”

  “Wow, it has expanded.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well I went to renew my passport three weeks ago and was denied. But I did not know that

  the scope of persecution has expanded beyond not renewing my passport to include all

  consular services,” I said. “This means that if I get arrested, or into any situation, no embassy

  of Nigeria is supposed to come to my aid. Effectively I have been declared no longer a

  citizen of Nigeria by President Yar’Adua.”

  “You know, I thought it was very strange. In my two decades in the diplomatic service, I have

  never seen anything like this. I thought I should inform you and ask you to be careful.”

  “Can you get me this cable?”

  “I have just come across it, I did not think of taking a copy, but I will try to retrieve it from

  the department I minuted it to and get you a copy.”

  “No, do not, because
it will raise eyebrows and you are my classmate, and it is easy to

  suspect you as the source, so just leave this as it is, I will get it, somewhere, somehow.

  Thanks.”

  Since it had been sent to 120 Nigerian diplomatic missions, and at least three of my friends or

  classmates and a similar number who were ministerial colleagues were ambassadors, I figured I

  would be able to get it from at least one of them. I began to call all our diplomatic missions where

  friends, classmates and acquaintances served. I asked them all the same question: “Guys, there is a

  cable out there declaring that I am to be denied my consular rights. Can I have a copy?” The most

  courageous of them obtained the cable, got his son to copy it out in long hand and sent the transcript to

  me. All the others were too scared to send me a copy while a few even stopped taking my calls. I,

  therefore, started focusing on Nigeria and working my contacts within the federal government. Within

  a week, I got a batch of correspondence, scanned and sent to me as a pdf file, containing everything

  ever written and commented on the subject. The cable was only the latest product of the decision-

  making chain. Before the cable was sent to every mission, the director general of the NIA had written

  to the ministry of foreign affairs, conveying the directives of the president that consular services

  should be denied to Nasir El-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu. Nuhu had not gone to renew his passport but he