abdulraheem
A few years ago, the Management of Media Trust Limited
was in some difficult search for the appropriately located
plot of land to build its print shop and corporate.
headquarters in
Abuja. Nasir El-Rufai was the proconsul that
Obasanjo had appointed to supervise the affairs of the FCT; in my
mind, I had thought that it should be easy for the fledgling media
company to get the assistance of the small man that was poised to
turn around the city. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. What I
heard was that el-Rufai had been opposed to media trust and its
publications, because we were ‘opposed to reforms”.
That was supposed to be a euphemism for the series of
unpatriotic, neo-liberal, capitalist reforms that the so-called
economic team was ramming down the throat of an unwilling and
prostrate country, during the days of the kleptocratic regime of
the despotic Olusegun Obasanjo. It was with a near-religious
frenzy, which the putative Nasir El-Rufai, took to the larger-than
life role that he was given to play in the regime of the disgraced
kleptocratic despot, Obasanjo.
El-Rufai a Quantity Surveyor with a brilliant academic record,
had been said to have attended a few courses in some American
institutions, and had unfortunately become absolutely deluded
that, together with other pro-imperialist “experts” like Oby
Ezekwesili (who enjoyed lapping up the title of “Doctor”, when
she doesn’t have a PhD degree!), they were teaching Nigerians
the last words in orthodoxy! El-Rufai did some very positive
1
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, kawumodibbo@yahoo.com
EL-RUFAI, OBASANJO
AND ABUJA LAND GRAB
The Writings of a Media Life. Things in the effort to reclaim the FCT, as I have always
acknowledged in my write ups, but he also made serious mistakes
which seemed certain to haunt him into the future. And as the
revelations of the past few days are beginning to show, that future
was eventually going to be an abbreviated one.
Nasir El-Rufai’s effusiveness beyond the call of duty,
unfortunately, became a most easily manipulable aspect of his
persona; and in the hands of a ruthless and immoral dictator like
Obasanjo, el-Rufai became like an attack dog, willing and able to
do anything, for as long as he got the plaudits of the monster that
he worked for. The Obasanjo pat-on-the-back became the entire
basis of his satisfaction as a public official. The only basis? Well,
as we have been shown this week, there was also the “small
matter” of “juicy” plots of land along with other points that we
may still not know about: just yet! The general manager of the
Abuja geographical information system (AGIS), Malam ismaila
Iro, told the senate committee hearings on the FCT
administration that members of Obasanjo’s family got 15 plots of
land, including one that he got on the last day of office, on May
28, 2007. That particular plot was one that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti,
would have described as “government magic”, because
according to Iro, “the allocation was revoked and the land re
allocated to Obasanjo, a day before he handed over to president
Umaru Yar’ Adua”. Having satisfied the clearly demented despot,
El-Rufai, like the smart fellow that he is, and by all account he
truly is! He also decided to join the gravy train. Malam Iro is
quoted as saying that “about 19 plots, which were revoked
because they were on sewage lines, were later re-allocated to
relatives of the former FCT Minister, Malam el-Rufai”.
If these allegations are true, and I say that they still remain
allegations, because el-Rufai has not stated his side of the story,
as I write this piece, then we might be in far more trouble in
Nigeria than we have previously suspected. The patterns of
revelations of the past few weeks, either from the power sector
probe or the FCT hearings, all point to a systematic project of
banditry that was instituted during the eight year regime of
The Writings of a Media Life. Obasanjo. These revelations and the effort to prevent them ever
happening in the first place, had been the main reason why there
was the need to get a Third Term agenda off the ground. Our
defeat of Third Term was therefore a very important victory,
because without it, we might never have arrived at the point
where some efforts are now being made to lift the lid off some of
the rot from the Obasanjo period. We cannot gauge just how far
the ruling elite is willing to go, to expose their own collective
dirty linens in the sun of Nigerian public life; it is the Nigerian
people that can force the hands of the elite to make judicial
examples of the most patently criminal elements amongst
themselves.
However, we can still make some assessments of the roles of
individuals caught within the vortex of abuse of priviledges that
we have heard so much about in recent days. Nasir el-Rufai
belongs to my generation, and that in itself is a point of genuine
sympathy for the man in his difficult situation. However, El-Rufai
got it coming, as the Americans would say; he alienated too many
people in his work and did not make things easy for himself by his
haughty manner while in public service. The main points of El-
Rufai’s problems must be located both in his world view and his
psychological make-up. Ideologically, El-Rufai is a viciously
right-wing, neo-fascist, who believes that the best way forward
for Nigeria or any country for that matter, was shock therapy
capitalism. He has a particular disdain for the poor, and even
when the steps he needed to take in public life were essential and
inevitable, he did not learn the tact and did not have the humility
to attempt to win people over to his side. He saw things in the
either-or, black or white perspectives of the fundamentalist
fanatics of the George Bush type. El-Rufai enjoyed the ambience
not to say the latitude, which Obasanjo gave him, believing.
erroneously, that he had become invincible and able to achieve.
anything! Unfortunately, because of that inability to see the larger
picture, he did not realise that Obasanjo was moving him around.
a chess board of political intrigues like an unprotected pawn. The
problem was that El-Rufai enjoyed that role and the power and
paraphernalia of office; he genuinely grew taller (no pun
The Writings of a Media Life. intended!) atop the ruins he brought to the lives of so many.
people.
Then there is also the deeply psychological dimension to El-
Rufai’s difficulties. A small man, who excessively needed to do.
“giant” things; El-Rufai has a deep-seated inferiority complex.
which he could not exorcise, even when he held very high office.
There must have been some very deeply ingrained trauma from
his early life which continued to seep to the surface in so many
ways and were easily discernable to whoever can do a basic
psychological portrait of the man. He was so obsessed with
foreign degrees, foreign life, and all those trappings of life that
imperialism has cultivated with the neo-colonial bourgeoisie,
that he was willing to bend the rules to indulge this pandering to
the foreign. That explains the infamous salaries he paid to staff
barely out of NYSC, just because they trained abroad. The
obverse was his disdain for Nigerian bureaucrats, many of whom
in fairness to Nasir El-Rufai were hopelessly corrupt. What was
deficient again was his handling of those issues, betraying his
deep-seated psychological inadequacies!
Nasir El-Rufai became a tool in the hands of Obasanjo;
unfortunately we cannot now say that he was an unwilling pawn.
He consciously chose to abandon or is it betray his erstwhile
benefactor, Atiku Abubakar, and to show how complete his
change of master was, he became a shameless attack dog, that
was unleashed to abuse Atiku Abubakar. He had attached himself
so completely to the Obasanjo chariot, that far into the future,
even the good that he achieved (and no one can deny his focus and
ability) would always carry the blots and stains of close
association with the most reviled, most criminal and most anti
people president that Nigeria ever had, the kleptocratic despot,
Olusegun Obasanjo. It is not good company for a young man who
still has a life time ahead of him.
But el-Rufai made his choices very consciously and his chickens
are just returning to the homestead to roost! The probing of the
FCT might have an intention that is quite noble, but who can fail
The Writings of a Media Life.to see that El-Rufai is actually the main person that is being set up
for a fall? The truth is that not a few people will be willing to see
the humiliation of a young man who carried on, as if life began
and ended with Obasanjo, or as if there was not going to be the
day after! That is really why not many people will defend El-
Rufai, except perhaps his former aides, those who benefitted
from his tenure and a set of lumpen hack writers that can always
be paid to abuse whoever said anything critical of their
benefactor.
It is good to learn vital lessons from the plight of el-Rufai,
because when individuals who have an access to power do not
handle their position very adroitly, even the good of their days
might be interred before they leave the scene. The objective
observer of the FCT today will not fail to see the creeping return
to the old ways of rot, chaos and lawlessness. It stands in contrast
to a lot of the good things which El-Rufai’s leadership of the
process of reclamation of the city did, while he held sway. But it is
the pains inflicted on people; the impolitic outbursts and the
arrogant posturing which a lot of people now associate with El-
Rufia. it is an incredible indictment of his undoubted intellect, and
his failure to deploy same in a manner that can help sustain a
positive image into the future. Those who have brought out his
role in the land grab scandal in Abuja are only applying a final
nail to his public service record, because they know that they can
count on people’s bitterness against El-Rufai, to sustain their
counter-attack. The winter belonged to Nasir El-Rufai, now his
adversaries have seized the spring!
The Writings of a Media Lif
