The Accidental Public Servant

by El-Rufai, Nasir

  I know this strikes some people as arrogance, but I am really not sensitive to people not liking me.

  None of the hard decisions I took while in public service were done without a lot of thought, debate

  and widespread consultations. I met with my staff, we discussed and extensively debated all issues –

  nothing was off the table. Everyone was free to say anything, and part of the discussion would

  obviously include a consideration of who would benefit and who would lose or be hurt. It is

  impossible to have a situation in which nobody comes out losing something – that is the reality of

  public policy, that there will be a cost and a benefit and at the cost end will be people losing

  something or suffering some inconvenience. The key is to generally minimize those who bear some

  cost and maximize those who benefit. Once I aggregated all the views, I would decide which way to

  go, or we would vote on which way to go and then not look back. I have confidence in, and I’m a

  strong believer in, the wisdom of crowds. If there were ten of us in the room and nine of us agreed on

  a point of view, I got on with implementing the majority decision and did so with a very clear

  conscience.

  There will always be detractors and sometimes they twist the truth into a version that suits their

  purposes. I ignore most of them. A few bad ones or those that have consistently defamed me, I sued,

  particularly when I was in government. But now, I take a dim view of them and mostly ignore them.

  These people cannot define me. There are newspapers that will never say anything positive about me

  in Nigeria, no matter what I do – the Daily Trust and its sister publications constitute such examples.

  At the other end, there are other newspapers, such as Leadership, which will generally depict me

  positively. In between these extremes, anything is possible.

  I think people are discerning enough to understand this, particularly since I returned from exile. My

  sense, and I may be wrong, is that Nigeria is sliding toward a crossroads in which it will be more

  important to get things done, however painful, than to be liked. Despite the fact that I supposedly

  inflicted pain on people, the reality is that people still approach me and wonder why I am not running

  for public office – senate, governorship, even the presidency! How does this logic figure? ‘El-Rufai

  demolished my house, I thought then that he was a wicked man, but now I know better, we need

  people like that to get things done without fear or favour.’ – is that the thinking?

  In environments like North America or Europe, where institutions are strong and things basically

  work, a politician must be liked to be elected. In Nigeria it seems that we are getting to a point where

  things are so bad that people really look around and just want someone who they know can solve their

  problems. Buhari’s political appeal is largely for this reason. [197] In the last four or five years, my

  name has been mentioned several times amongst the persons that can fix our electricity problem, for

  example. It comes up so many times, it makes me laugh sometimes. I can only deduce that it is

  because my record in public service shows that I have shown the capacity to take very hard and

  unpopular decisions in the short term that may appear undesirable at the outset but wind up benefitting

  the majority of citizens over the long term, and some people have noticed.

  Only time will tell whether people have drawn the same conclusion from this that I have, which is

  that we have a leadership problem in our country. Our positive traits, taken together with honest and

  transparent leadership, can be leveraged. We were very unpopular in Abuja for the first months of

  Obasanjo’s second term, but toward the end, people began to appreciate what we were doing. Since

  returning to Nigeria from exile, it has become even deeper – when I walk around on the streets of

  Abuja, people come up to me and want to shake my hand and tell me how I have done a good job. All

  the positives are there, but if these positives are not properly channeled, they quickly become

  negatives. Nigeria has enormous potential that can be leveraged to make it a really great country, but

  we have not been lucky with the leadership to bring all this energy together and channel it in a

  positive way.

  Our Bane: Too Many Critics, Too Few Doers

  I came upon these words attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th US president, and they struck

  powerfully at how I have always seen myself. I have collected many scars during my decade in public

  service and its aftermath, in addition to many triumphs that I feel certain would have made proud that

  old man in Daudawa village, my dad, whose deathbed admonition to his little boy those many years

  ago have remained with me.

  I see myself as a doer, even if an imperfect one - not a fence sitter, and I feel that in private and

  public sector careers President Roosevelt was speaking to me when he said:

  “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how

  the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have

  done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in

  the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who

  strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;

  because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who

  does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great

  enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy

  cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high

  achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while

  daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and

  timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

  Our challenges are many, but our opportunities outstrip them. We will however have no chance of

  overcoming these obstacles without commitment and sacrifice from a critical mass of our people. Our

  country has amazing potential, and to watch these opportunities squandered each passing day I

  consider to be nothing less than tragic. We all know that when given the chance to help ourselves,

  Nigerians do it and do so enthusiastically. Perhaps we have been jaded into expecting nothing from

  our governments because we have had such bad governments. However, this view is necessarily a

  two-way street: as one friend of mine is fond of saying, ‘a true democracy deserves whatever

  leadership it gets,’ and I believe this to be the case with Nigeria. The more we choose not to care, the

  more we choose to opt out of politics, stay on the sidelines, or move abroad, the more we choose to

  resign ourselves to cynicism, the more our resignation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and our

  daily reality. The more we fail our children and their children. The more we decree a life of suffering

  and limitation for each child that wakes up in this land.

  I hope this book has accomplished what I set out to do, which is make the case that public service

  should be something every serious Nigerian should consider if we are truly determined to put our

  country on the right track. All my working life, in both public service and the private sector, I have

  never sat on the fence with regard to any significant issue that affects my person, my neighbourhood,

  community, and my country. I have been consistent in expressing my views boldly and clearly based

  on the best information at my
disposal at any point in time - no matter what discomforts some may

  have about such views, and at whatever costs they might impose on me. When superior information or

  better arguments convince me to change my position, I do so without hesitation, egotism or false

  pride. I never hang on to the illusion of yesterday’s views and opinions when new information or

  circumstances prove them defective or outrightly wrong. I have never sought personal advantage at

  the expense of another person. I have never gone to bed with a grudge, because I express myself

  clearly and usually immediately. I wake up the next morning renewed, having forgiven the offender,

  and ready to start afresh again.

  I have experienced the slings and arrows that come with life in the public glare, the victories and

  defeats that Roosevelt so eloquently described. I chose to never sit on the fence, but feel most alive

  when I feel the sweat on my face mix with the dust of battle, the battle for the public good. I have

  chosen, consciously and deliberately, to be amongst the troops who fight the battles to right public

  wrongs. I am fully prepared to lose some of them, but to push on and never surrender. I pray

  constantly for Allah to forgive my errors and strengthen my resolve to do right to everyone, including

  those that have hurt or offended me and those I love. The struggle to preserve a flicker of hope in

  every heart, and to ensure a better life for every citizen, requires many hands pushing forward

  together. I hope someday, and soon, some of you will join us.

  Afterword

  In 1978, Deng Ziaoping pronounced to a shell-shocked and demoralized China: “It doesn’t matter if a

  cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” With that, he unleashed the long repressed energy

  and single-mindedness of the Chinese people, so that in the three decades since, China has risen from

  abject poverty and social disarray to become arguably the second most powerful nation on earth, and

  still rising fast. Until the diminutive Deng and the Chinese Communist Party let their people go, China

  was in about as bad a place as nearly any country, having gone through more than a century of foreign

  domination, imperial dissolution, civil war, famine, repression, and general chaos. During Mao’s

  famine-inducing Great Leap Forward, upwards of 45 million Chinese starved to death, and many

  were reduced to a desperate cannibalism. That was followed by another decade of social convulsion,

  the so-called Cultural Revolution from 1966 that ended only with Mao’s death, in 1976. That chaotic

  decade saw the virtual destruction of the Chinese intelligentsia, and the final sundering of all measure

  of trust required to glue a functioning society.

  So what has that got to do with Nasir El-Rufai?

  This account of his near-decade in the inner sanctums of Nigeria’s government, and the following five

  years in which he was pursued across the globe by his political enemies, can often make for

  depressing reading. This memoir has all the elements of a great Oyo tragedy: a talented but deeply

  flawed king blinded by hubris; his ambitious and politically adroit deputy who always carried about

  him a whiff of scandal; a powerful but politically naive band of reformist technocrats, determined to

  rebuild their country but riven by internal rivalries and the sin of unrestrained ego; a vast cast of

  unselfconsciously depraved courtiers and high officials with large snouts planted firmly in the

  imperial trough; a passive and ignorant subject people willing to put up with virtually anything-- busy

  as they are with hanging on to the remnants of blighted lives.

  For this reason, and though the narrative is also full of passages of great comedic power, as well as

  the inspirational accounts of almost superhuman effort in the service of the good, the inescapable

  sense the reader gets is of a country hurtling, eyes wide shut, towards utter failure.

  It all should be rather depressing, but it thankfully isn’t, for a couple of reasons.

  One is that, just 30 years ago, China was in worse shape than Nigeria is today. It was far poorer,

  more dysfunctional, and arguably far more demoralized than anything our country is currently

  experiencing. And, left as we are to the tender mercies of our current political overlords, that is

  saying something. If the Chinese can rise from the ashes of a self-immolated country, so can we.

  Which leads to the second point: The Accidental Public Servant makes clear to us that we have more

  than enough people who are committed, selfless and capable to lead our country to a better place.

  You’ll find some of them in this book, women and men, high and low, who carved out areas of light in

  our overwhelming political darkness. Many of them are unsung, but their collective efforts gave us,

  from 2003 to 2006, a period of sustained and sometimes inspired government. Many of them carried

  within them the spark of the divine, and they showed that it is possible for us, current evidence

  notwithstanding, to build a country worthy of our children.

  Nasir El-Rufai is to a degree chastened by his experience, but one gets the sense that this is a leader

  willing to bleed for the good society we all seek.

  I will hazard a guess that, before too long, he will be back in the fray.

  Dele Olojede

  Johannesburg

  Nov. 28, 2012

  Endnotes

  [1] Chief of Staff's memo to Yar’Adua on withdrawing security guards and the explanatory memos

  can be found in Appendix 1 of this book.

  [2]

  This was reported inter alia by the Punch see: http://www.punchontheweb.com/Article-print2.aspx?

  theartic=Art20... See also Next, December 08, 2009 reported by Nicholas Ibekwe: “Police issue

  warrant for Ribadu, El-Rufai's arrest" - http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5493178-

  146/story.csp - Accessed on 11th November 2011.

  [3]

  Senate Committee hearings on the FCT (2008); the House Privatization Committee planned hearings

  in 2009, but the chairman Hon. Yaro Gella fell ill and died shortly after the announcement; and the

  Senate Committee hearings on privatization between 1999-2011 which took place in August 2011.

  [4]

  Examples are the Police, SSS and EFCC. The police report on NIPOST land re-allocation remains an

  anomaly wherein the Police was unlawfully procured to investigate a civil matter already before a

  court. The police report accused me of criminal breach of trust and requested the Attorney-General to

  prosecute. Even Aondoakaa knew that this would amount to malicious prosecution and abuse of

  judicial process and declined to do so. The EFCC investigated me twice under Ribadu's leadership

  and seven times under Farida Waziri's leadership. Some of these ‘reports’ are on this book’s website.

  I was also investigated by the SSS (twice between 2003 and 2007), and the Code of Conduct Bureau

  once to check if I honestly declared my assets in 2008, upon leaving office in 2007!

  [5]

  Former Attorney-General Michael Aondoakaa admitted to me on November 7th, 2011, on a flight

  from Abuja to Addis Ababa, that the government sent a request to Interpol to list me as a "wanted

  criminal" on President Yar’Adua's insistence in 2009, along with the Senate Committee Report. The

  Interpol replied that the accusations were politically-motivated and declined to get involved in what

  is a "purely domestic political matter". Aondoakaa indicated that he wa
s under the constant threat of

  being sacked unless he continued to mention Interpol and extradition in his public statements about me

  in spite of the Interpol rejection of the request of the Yar’Adua administration.

  [6]

  Aondoakaa’s interviews in several newspapers, widely reported on 16th April, 2009. See for

  instance:

  http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/news/article01//indexn2_html?

  pdate=160409&ptitle=Govt%20to%20raise%20panel%20over%20Halliburton%20scam - Accessed

  16th February 2010. See also Tell Magazine No. 40, October 5, 2009 - "Nigeria - The Making of a

  Failed State", pp. 20-22 which stated - "El-Rufai's offence is that he was likely to be a presidential

  candidate in 2007 because he was close to Obasanjo."www.tellng.com

  [7] I have four pending lawsuits against the Federal Government or its agencies, the Senate, FCTA

  and the Attorney General of the Federation.

  [8]

  I have also filed a libel lawsuit against Suleiman Yahya and Rosehill, and at least two newspapers in

  High Court of the FCT. The suits are ongoing. I won a libel case against the Independent newspaper

  allegedly owned by James Ibori while still on exile in the FCT High Court. Damages of N6 million

  were awarded in my favour.

  [9]

  The case was thrown by the Federal High Court on October 20, 2010. The summary of the Ruling

  states inter alia: “The above quotation sums it all, that the charges brought against the Accused

  persons were without any foundation in law as the law under which the charges were brought ceased

  to exist since the 8th of May 2003. So the Accused persons could not have committed offences

  between the 13th day of December, 2003 and 14th of December 2007 under Sections 19 and 26 (1) ©

  of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, that law having ceased to exist on 8th

  day of May, 2003. The 8 counts charge is therefore without any legal fulcrum. Ex Nihilo Nihil fit –

  from nothing, nothing comes. I hold that the charges are fundamentally defective. They were dead on