El-Rufai As Tinubu’s Quagmire

EXPRESSO BY STEVE OSUJI

The Tick On The Scrotum: It’s a situation that begs for denouement, not prosecution or persecution at that. Nasir El-Rufai is a tick on President Bola Tinubu’s scrotum. You don’t swat it. You gently maneuver it out of its sensitive perch. It’s a no-brainer that you may crush your vital organ beyond repairs if you attack it with (epic?) fury.

If the President had great heads around him, they would not only tell him so, they would have worked out the deals in great detail, including all the options available to the president.

But it looks like everyone working out of House One is doing his thing and furiously stacking his barn. It seems like these days, nigh every public official has one abiding personal agenda – grab, grab – while national assignments are secondary.

But the point is that the Tinubu administration can’t wish away Nigeria’s stormy Petrel and enfant terrible, El-Rufai. Shunting him out of this administration is a tactical error. It’s Tinubu’s quagmire and may well prove to be a grevious error and his nemesis.

It’s not for nothing that some have  nicknamed him Hellrufai!

LONG CORRIDORS OF POWER:

Here’s some background to all of this: he’s a brilliant and cerebral fellow who was among the top of his Quantity Surveying class of the early 80s at Ahmadu Bello University, ABU.

He was Muhammadu Buhari’s handyman in General Sani Abacha’s Petroleum Trust Fund of the early ‘90s. He was also to become deeply involved in the General Abdulsalam Abubakar’s transition programme that ushered in the civilian government in 1999. For those who may not know, it’s not by happenstance that El-Rufai fluidly segued into the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999) as he was immediately made head of the Bureau for Private Enterprise (BPE) and later Minister of the Federal Capital Territory.

He lost favour with the Umaru Yar’Adua  government in 2007,  but after a short interregnum, El-Rufai was to bounce back into the limelight as a founding member of the APC (CPC faction), two term governor of Kaduna State from 2015 – 2023.

Stormy and tempestuous, he had a half successful and half tumultuous tenure in Kaduna. The dark spot being  the bloody ethnic and religious conflicts as well as heightened banditry that almost marred his days in office.

HEDGING ON TINUBU:

But his highpoint was in braving all odds to ensure that the presidency moved to the south after President Muhammadu Buhari. And ensuring that candidate Tinubu emerged and standing with him all the way until the ruling APC snatched the polls in 2023.

While Buhari doodled about his successor, El-Rufai read the handwriting that the then incumbent had no particular choice. El-Rufai moved in, outwitted the cabal of that era, rallied some of the governors and even faced down the presidency during the naira redesign ruckus.

Remember it was El-Rufai who went to court to wrought an order staying the hand of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Presidency. This gallant effort made sure that candidate Bola Tinubu wasn’t asphyxiated by cash scarcity in the heat of the Presidential campaign.

In other words, El-Rufai played no mean role in ensuring that Tinubu sits on the throne today.

BETWEEN RIBADU AND EL RUFAI:

However, when time came to share the booty, El-Rufai was shunted out by his friend turned arch-enemy Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who was already the National Security Adviser (NSA). President Tinubu was placed in a position of choosing between Ribadu and El-Rufai.

It didn’t have to be. El-Rufai could have been managed better under the new administration. Perhaps by keeping them far and away from each other’s path. In any case, El Rufai probably really didn’t need a cabinet position. Having access to the president, being in some kitchen cabinet may have salved his appetite for relevance and power.

But to disqualify El-Rufai outright with ignominy on the guise of being a security risk and to lock him out of the Aso Rock precincts was the ultimate political faux pas of the incumbent. El Rufai accepting disqualification on grounds of security would have impugned future appointments or even bar him from contesting for future elective offices.

Of course, that was much more than anyone could accept.

How could a screening process that cleared Mr Nyesom Wike, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, Abdulaziz Yari, Bello Matawale and Godswill Akpabio to name a few, slam El Rufai?

Rejected, ostracised and shamed, El-Rufai had no choice but to exit APC, a party he helped birth and nurture. He had to break with the president he staked everything to install. He moved to the emerging coalition, Africa Democratic Congress, ADC.

MASTER OF POLITICAL MIND GAME:

 Not one to be caged or silenced, El-Rufai revved up his fine art of political mind game and activism against his estranged party and even the president. In Nigeria’s political firmament today, any politically savvy president would rather have El-Rufai in his corner than on the other side.

Sharp tongued, quick-witted and restless, every waking day was a torment for his erstwhile party, APC. To the point that many members, including the President probably regret keeping him outside the APC gate right now.

El-Rufai was growing by the day to become the most formidable member of the opposition party and a torn on APC’s flesh. It was time to reign him in.

It took the entire armada of the DSS, EFCC and the ICPC to move against El-Rufai. You would think these agencies of state were mobilizing against a new kind of insurgents.

 He was accused of wire-tap. He was accused of sponsoring terrorism and of course, treasury looting, the common fare of today’s politicians. And we say, if terror finance was a crime, the entire APC members should be in jail as all the Boko Haram masterminds are in this government. They know them, we know them and every adult Nigerian knows the brains behind Biko Haram, for instance. Some of them are currently entrenched in the Presidency. It’s the same with treasury looting: About 90% of APC office holders (from top to bottom) would have been hung if this were China. So when anyone is therefore, singled out for investigation, it becomes clear and unveiled exercise in witch-hunt and political persecution.

One thing however, is to accuse, another is to make the allegations stick before the courts.

But the first motive is probably to break him. Bog him down, keep him away in remand for as long as can be got away with. That explains why since February 18th, he has been looked up in detention without the option of a bail.

Again, this is not to exculpate El Rufai of any crime but to put the matter in perspective.

FIGHTING CORRUPTION WITH CORRUPTION:

Ab initio, it’s shameful that the Tinubu administration still pretends to care about official graft. But unfortunately, an environment of free for all looting is what seems pervasive. This is not just what the population can perceive, it’s what they see happening all around them everyday. In the first place, the president’s cabinet is like a dark sea filled with dark creatures. Hardly any in the cabinet can be held to light.

In running checks on shortlisted appointees, it seems past corruption records don’t matter anymore, otherwise how could a certain Jimoh Ibrahim pass screening? How could he be posted to one of the most sensitive outposts: the UN Mission? Under proper scrutiny, only a few of the current ministers would pass muster.

El-Rufai is by no means a paragon of rectitude in office but to single him or anyone for that matter out for the slammer is outright bad faith. It must be stated that this administration may have lost the moral authority to prosecute anyone for graft. Corruption cannot deign to fight corruption.

PITIABLE AGENCIES OF STATE:

The major losers when politics becomes vendetta are the institutions and agencies of state. The DSS, EFCC, ICPC and the likes being pressed to these ignoble political duties will never be the same again. Their independence and moral authority are being eroded if not damaged outright. They soon begin to practice in the breach. Injustice now thrives in the place of justice, inequity takes the place of equity and opacity is their new transparency.

STELLA ODUAH, PLEA-BARGAIN AS NIGHT BUSINESS:

The EFCC has particularly become a basket case. I watch my friend, the pastor-chairman and I shake my head. Consider the peculiar case of Mrs Stella Oduah who has just been sprung on a supposed plea-bargain process.

Mrs Oduah will go down  as  among the best public servants in the annals of modern Nigeria. As Minister of Aviation ( 2011 – 2014) she revamped and upgraded over a dozen airport across Nigeria in a period of two and half years. Working the sites simultaneously, day and night, she achieved a feat no other minister ever did or could. It was magical for those who witnessed it.

But as Aviation minister, Oduah had a tiff with First Nation Airlines which operated out of Bourdillon in Ikoyi, Lagos, (you guess the owner)  which led to its grounding. Since then, 15 years on, she had been hounded by the EFCC canine until she was recently cornered striped naked (!) in a so-called plea-bargain settlement that has been most secret and secretive. Why should this settlement be done in the dark if the funds belong to the federal government. This type of bargain should be transparent and open to avoid compromise and abuse. But this was night market!

Meanwhile, Femi Fani-Kayode who served in the same position and had a running case with the EFCC for about 18 years for finagling with about N24 billion of Aviation Funds had his matter cleared last year apparently to pave way for his plum ambassadorial posting to Germany. This is how Nigeria is run today. You may also check out the case of one DCP Abba Kyari of the Hushpuppi-gate! He has been sprung too!

In a nutshell, the EFCC has become a pathetic shadow of itself, a stringed marionette dancing only to the beats of Aso Rock.

FINAL ANALYSIS:

This column hereby posits that the presidency should allow the opposition to breathe; it should let El Rufai be. If APC has corralled 32 out of 36 governors into it fold, why is it still pursuing opposition politicians like El Rufai, Abubakar Malami, Aminu Tambuwal, among others? This El Rufai matter may well become Tinubu’s nemesis if the current quagmire is not resolved pronto!

LAST LINE:

THE MERRY HORDE AT WINDSOR

As you read this, the curtain is being drawn on the Falstaffian comedy at the  Windsor (theatre) England. Described as a historic visit to the British monarch, nearly the entire federal cabinet plus a coterie of hangers-on emptied into England.  The Brits will never forget the day they opened their gate to a raucous Nigerian crowd. Imagine over 30 governors, cabinet ministers, aides and mistresses invading the ancient sovereign.

An excitable governor Sanwoolu of Lagos tweeted how he was enthralled to welcome President Tinubu to England and the world is still wondering if he’s now the mayor of London!?

Deadly explosions rocked Maiduguri like gun salutes as the president jetted off, leaving lives and limbs of hapless Nigerians in disarray.  But the government and officials are over the moon about this so-called historic state visit; explosions have always been with us, they must have said to themselves, but the King and Queen of England is a lifetime experience!

The world continues to snigger at Nigeria’s Falstaff moment: Why are these people so elated at reviving an ossified and withering monarchy that serious people don’t give half penny about anymore?!

The world sees  the splurging, the resource laundering and the wild shopping and they wonder whether money is like the sands of the sea in Nigeria? But when they recall that Nigeria has nigh the poorest population under the sun, they shudder and wonder whether the merry entourage is under a certain spell.

We dare not ask about the cost of this historic jamboree. Nobody will tell you anyway. ##