The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  elections in Kogi, Adamawa, Sokoto and Cross Rivers states. I thought carefully about the assignment

  and accepted the challenge without any pre-conditions. The bulk of the membership was nominated by

  the national executive committee of the party, we added a few names of dedicated members that I

  know and got GMB’s blessings to proceed. The assignment is ongoing as I write this, but it is clear

  that we would face serious internal and external challenges. Internally, self-acclaimed owners of the

  Buhari brand would think we intend to hijack the party and their product and would certainly attempt

  all kinds of political mischief and shenanigans. Externally, the ruling party would do everything to

  derail our efforts to rebuild and rebrand the party, including planting agents in our midst and

  deploying political mercenaries to distract us. I am determined that we remain focused until we

  deliver on our mandate sometime before the end of 2012 or in early 2013, by the grace of God.

  ….and Yasmin’s Death…..

  On 25th November, I traveled to Lagos to attend two events with my wife Aisha, Jimi, and his bride,

  Somi Obozuwa. Earlier in October, we had gone to Benin to begin the traditional rites for Jimi’s

  marriage to Somi. The wedding fatiha took place in Ijebu-Ode some days after. Pastor Tunde Bakare

  decided to host Jimi and Somi to a wedding dinner at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants in Ikeja.

  We went to Lagos to attend that and participate at an annual youth event organized by Toyosi Akerele

  of Rise, a well-regarded young people’s organization. Pastor Bakare was a keynote speaker, and I

  was expected to make a few remarks as well. We attended the two events without any hitches.

  The next day, 26th November, I was booked to take the British Airways flight from Lagos to London

  to visit my daughter, Yasmin, and her friend, Member Feese, [194] then in hospital. What I did not

  know until days later was that she had a massive seizure while getting dressed, slumped and died

  instantly in the bathroom of her apartment in Lisson Grove, London. As a child, Yasmin had been

  diagnosed with a mild neurological condition which unfortunately got more serious as she got older.

  She had been on prescription drugs to control the resultant seizures for years, and was doing quite

  well. Her sudden death was a great shock to all of us – particularly her mother Hadiza and I. I

  therefore canceled the trip to London, and went back to Abuja to receive the influx of people

  expected in our home on condolence visits.

  For me and Hadiza, Yasmin was not just our first biological child, but was the centre, unifier and

  bridge builder of all the branches of our extended family. Everyone loved her – for she was kind,

  charming and intelligent. She was a humble child who never let the fact that her father was a visible

  public figure ever got to her head. I still remember the first question she asked me when I informed

  the children that I had been offered a public service job and wished to accept. Pointedly she asked –

  “Baba, does that mean my friends in school would say my father has become a thief?” Yasmin was

  very close to me, and everyone knew that I loved her more than my own life. She was fair to her

  siblings, and took the responsibility of looking after everyone else, - siblings, cousins, nephews and

  nieces with energy and commitment - sometimes even to her detriment. I still recall with great pride

  that Yasmin chose to study law after her masters’ degree in political economy with the intention of

  pursuing a career in public service in Nigeria. She declined to consider opportunities in international

  development recommended by her two favourite aunties, Ngozi and Oby, because she felt Nigeria

  needed her skills first and much more. Yasmin is our daughter in every respect – she was completely

  detribalized and saw every human being as an individual worthy of respect and understanding. We

  were not surprised that the very first tribute published in her honour was by written Dipo

  Salimonu,[195] a Nigerian journalist living in London. The second was penned by Bashir Bala, then a

  young cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, who knew her and looked up to her as an

  elder sister.[196]

  Yasmin’s death brought all our old friends, ex-classmates and relations together in mourning. Dr.

  Angela Onwuanibe came all the way from Maryland, USA, concerned about my mental well-being

  and that of Hadiza and our children. Even friendships that went awry with people like my successor

  in FCT, Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, were repaired during the period of mourning. Pastor Chinedu

  Ezekwesili, Nuhu Ribadu, Femi Fani-Kayode, Shehu Gabam and Kabir Shuaibu were by our side

  each and every day, from morning till night, praying and supporting us through that period of

  unimaginable grief. I was particularly touched by the show of affection and concern expressed by

  many, but particularly moved by General Buhari’s attendance of prayers at the National Mosque and

  Yasmin’s funeral at the Gwarimpa cemetery. Atiku Abubakar visited us to express his sympathies.

  President Jonathan called to condole, and followed up with a formal letter. VP Namadi Sambo

  visited in person. Several state governors, senators, representatives, ministers and prominent

  businessmen and women came in person in sympathy. Even one-time adversaries like Mrs. Turai

  Yar’Adua and Farida Waziri phoned to express their sympathies.

  What can I say or write to prepare anyone for the loss of a truly loved one? One has to experience it

  to know the feeling. There is nothing or no one I held dear like Yasmin, and yet she is gone. What or

  who can hurt me anymore? What can I ever love and lose as I did with my baby – Yasmin? Till today,

  whenever I remember Yasmin – what she was, what she would have been – I break down emotionally

  and tear up. But as a Muslim brought up to submit wholly to the will of Almighty God, we are still

  learning to live without her, while waiting for our time to join her. I pray every day for Yasmin, and

  some days I wake up in the morning with thoughts of her as if she passed away the night before. In

  some way, Yasmin’s death was both the end of a phase of my life and the beginning of another. My

  attitude to life, loved ones and relationships changed. Henceforth, it is hard for me to care too much

  about the worldly and the temporary struggles of this life. Yasmin’s death had increased my faith and

  devotion to my religion of Islam. The rest of 2011 just moved on to end uneventfully. I remained in

  mourning, mostly keeping the company of my spouses and children as we came to terms with our

  irreplaceable loss. May Yasmin’s gentle soul rest in perfect peace, Amen.

  Epilogue

  Paradoxes are nothing but trouble. They violate the most

  elementary principle of logic: Something cannot be two different

  things at once. Two contradictory interpretations cannot both be

  true. A paradox is just such an impossible situation, and political

  life is full of them.”

  – Deborah Stone in “Policy Paradox” – The Art of Political Decision making

  What next? What is Nigeria’s future? How do we make things right? I could offer the usual platitudes

  about the need to restore order, reduce insecurity, create jobs and make our economy more

  productive, but the fact is that that sort of discourse can be applied just about anywhere. In any case, I

  have written extensively about all these policy
issues using various platforms on traditional and new

  media which require no repetition in this book. Instead, I would suggest we simply think about what

  Nigeria’s strengths are, what make us unique to the rest of the world. As an old saying goes, ‘When

  life gives you lemons – make lemonade.’ So, what are our lemons?

  Our Assets: Nigeria and Nigerians

  Someone recently asked me how one could recognize a Nigerian in a crowd of Africans. My

  immediate response was, look for the most confident, loudest, boisterous person there, who is

  walking around as if he owns the place and generally behaving as if he was doing you a favour being

  in your country. That is the Nigerian. It is almost as if we were never colonized. In most other African

  countries, even today, there is a large, thriving and very visible community of Lebanese, Indians,

  French, and so on. In Nigeria, this is not the case – the foreigners are here, but they are not visible and

  cannot afford to be. They are making a lot of money, but they have to maintain a low profile. There

  are, quite simply, certain things about the Nigerian that makes him unwilling to take any nonsense

  from anyone, which makes me wonder why we are so patient with some of the corrupt and

  incompetent leaders we have had.

  Now, why is this so? We are not rich, we are badly governed, we have failed to lead Africa – we are

  not the giant of Africa, but rather have turned out so far, to be the disappointment of Africa. What

  trumps this I think is that we are naturally a very competitive people, and this is something that is bred

  into us. Never mind the fact of our 160 million people or our 527 different languages negotiating

  constantly and daily for a piece of the pie. Before we even come to that, our culture of large families

  necessitates every child adapting to a Darwinian reality virtually the moment we leave the womb.

  Culturally, and even on a tribal basis, there has always been a lot of competition, negotiation and

  honing of survival techniques, even to survive within the family. This even applies to our Diaspora.

  We have a lot of countrymen abroad, and this is not a function of education, but of a resilience that

  drives people to go where the best opportunity is and make it happen. This was the case long before

  oil featured in an outsized way for us.

  Another characteristic of the Nigerian that goes hand in hand with the competitiveness:

  entrepreneurship. We are natural entrepreneurs who unfortunately sometimes are led astray and if we

  do not acknowledge and embrace these positive traits, they can very quickly turn negative. I believe

  this is why one of the things that made Nigerians famous is the scam letters. People see the scam

  letters as some weird thing. I disagree – it is an avenue to discharge Nigerian entrepreneurship at its

  worst. We have young, clever people, college graduates without opportunities in their country. They

  have no money to go abroad. Those that could leave have left. Those that cannot – what can they do?

  They can’t get a job; they can’t compete for procurement contracts because the playing field is not

  level unless you know the president, a general or a minister. If lots of clever Nigerians have no

  opportunity, what can be done? They have to survive. When some clever Nigerian’s neighbour just

  bought a new car from the proceeds of a fake letter sent to a gullible foreigner, it is not difficult to

  understand how such a shameful and dishonest activity can proliferate in no time: because it works,

  and there are no societal sanctions for the misconduct!

  The knee-jerk reaction of the authorities at the beginning, in the mid-1980s, was to not take this

  seriously, but to merely view it as payback against white people for stealing from us in the past. They

  did not see it as something that could have a seriously negative impact on our country’s image and so

  had no incentive to put a stop to it – after all, what’s the problem with taking money from greedy

  foreigners who are just trying to do the same to us? The problem is that our continued failure to rally

  Nigerians around a unified leadership and a common vision has led to this fragmentation in which

  everyone is for himself, no one for the country, and the government is for no one. This is also what

  has led to the Area Boy phenomenon in the south-west, militancy in the Niger Delta, the misguided

  religious anarchism of “Boko Haram” in the north, endless cycles of violence in Jos and Kaduna, and

  a kidnapping problem throughout the south-east.

  Perverse Incentives and their Consequences

  This unfortunate misguided outgrowth of our natural entrepreneurialism is compounded by poor

  institutional structure, poor infrastructure and poor rule of law whereby a vicious downward cycle is

  created from which it is becoming more and more difficult to extricate ourselves. As a result, our

  country is being robbed of its potential in a significant way. Suppose we were to take a ready-made

  country in North America or Western Europe, where infrastructure and institutions were already up

  and running, we removed the locals and inserted Nigerians. What would happen? I honestly think

  Nigerians would not only maintain the country’s stability but even improve it in dramatic ways. The

  successes of the Nigerian Diaspora clearly show that.

  Part of the problem is that when people start from the scratch and have to act collectively, the

  incentives guiding them in the wrong direction can be so overwhelming that they become very

  difficult to overcome, and if the past number of years is anything to go by, we have not avoided them.

  Were we more patriotic as a people, we might have avoided them, but we are not really patriotic

  compared to citizens of many other nations and I think the reason for this is that we do not have any

  real sense of nationhood. Nigerians are very proudly Nigerian when they are outside Nigeria, and

  they defend Nigeria. But in general, we do not feel Nigeria as a nation has done something significant

  for us.

  Take as an example the United States. If an American citizen is kidnapped in a foreign country, the

  American president will talk about it quite publicly and will promise to send the Marines, someone

  will call the American ambassador in that country, CNN will televise it around the clock, and the

  American government will do something – we have seen this happen. Now, imagine that I go to the

  US and get kidnapped. Do I need to finish this thought? The Nigerian embassy will just assume I was

  at the wrong place at the wrong time and, well, good riddance. For those who demand we change this

  attitude overnight, I would simply respond: like it or not, patriotism, like loyalty, is a two-way street.

  A country cares about its citizens and its citizens care about their country in return. The way for

  citizens to care is to be patriotic. If the leadership of a country does not care about its citizens, why

  should citizens care about the country? They cannot. We have not had many leaders who have

  persuaded Nigerians that the leadership and the country truly care about them.

  The thing is Nigerians can also be a very discerning, observant and obedient people. When we see a

  person we perceive to be a true leader, an honest leader, we actually obey him, we support him and

  we may even be patriotic. We have had a few leaders, like General Murtala Muhammad between

  1975 and 1976 and General Mohammad Buhari between 1983 and 1985, who had huge follow
ings

  because they were perceived to be honest, straightforward, nationally minded people that applied

  rules to the big man and the small man evenly and did not care about status, religion or ethnicity. Part

  of the reason General Buhari is still popular with many Nigerians and part of the reason he could

  contest the presidency and can win is because as a military head of state, he was perceived to be

  tough on corruption, and tough on the big men. Every Nigerian knows what the problems are in

  Nigeria, and it is the big men and women who believe that rules should apply to everyone except

  them. The ordinary Nigerian –the common man and woman struggling to survive illiteracy, poverty

  and disease will line up and do the right thing under good leadership.

  The Test of Leadership

  This is all quite easy to talk about. But as is true of any great challenge, describing it is the easy part;

  actually doing it is where the real test begins. I am sure both my friends and my enemies would agree

  that many of the things I accomplished so far as a public servant were due to very unpopular

  decisions I took that caused some short-term pain for more than a few people. My friends might say it

  was bravery that drove me to do these things; my enemies might say it was egotism. I say it was

  neither – it was mostly driven by outrage and anger that my country seems not to work in spite of our

  many endowments, and the fact that I am not a typical politician. Among the many implications of that

  truth, the one I would like to focus on is that one cannot blame people for disliking a person who

  causes pain, and it is very difficult for a politician to not want to be liked. Maybe because I looked at

  my time at the BPE and FCT not as a politician, but as a short-term public servant who knew from the

  beginning that he would come in for a period and then get out. This is how I perceived the world and

  doing the right thing was far more important for me than being liked.