Weeks after his controversial book, The
Accidental Public Servant, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory
under President Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration, Mr. Nasir
El-Rufai, in this online interview, tells LEKE BAIYEWU the roles he
played while in office and his disposition to Umaru Yar’ Adua and
Goodluck Jonathan-led administrations
As regards the solution to Boko
Haram insurgency, you once said the Federal Government knew what to do
and should do it. Does it mean the government is not getting it right by
proposing an amnesty for members of the sect?
I have always insisted that the Federal
Government knows what to do about the nation’s insecurity and should
just do it. It is the principal duty of the government to ensure peace
and security of the people. It is a responsibility that cannot be
outsourced. The state has certain prerogatives to enable it to discharge
this function, including enormous intelligence assets, the law and a
constitutional monopoly of the means of coercion. Preserving order,
ensuring peace and promoting harmony are among the highest objectives of
statecraft, and they are too serious to be left to the caprice of
politics or the destructive allure of ethnic and religious divisions.
Many of the policies of the President
Goodluck Jonathan administration are driven by these unhelpful attitudes
and sentiments, including the so-called amnesty programmes. As far back
as June 2011, the Jonathan administration knew what it needed to do
from the Galtimari Committee report and the resultant White Paper to nip
the Boko Haram insurgency in the bud. What did he do? He puts the
report, recommendations and White Paper in the drawer and watched, while
some 4,000 Nigerians were killed by Boko Haram and the military. Why is
it so hard to implement the recommendations of all the committees set
up by the government on the insurgency?
How would you describe that rate
of corruption in the National Assembly? You once accused two senators of
demanding bribes from you to ease your ministerial appointment
confirmation?
Corruption is a national challenge, and
the country has to summon the will to combat it in all sectors. It is
not only in the National Assembly but everywhere within other arms and
tiers of government. We simply must elect people of integrity that can
begin to attack this national scourge from the top down.
As the Director General of the
Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Secretary of the National Council
of Privatisation from November 1999 to July 2003, how would you describe
the perceived failure in the sale of public corporations?
Perception can sometimes be miles apart
from reality. The BPE under my leadership successfully privatised many
companies through transparent and open bids. For example, Unipetrol is
now Oando; National Oil is now Conoil; and both companies are thriving.
Where we were obstructed by personal and political interests from
concluding their privatisation, the companies concerned were either
eventually liquidated – like Nigeria Airways – or have lost value and
market share to nimbler competitors – like NITEL.
There were no irregularities in
privatisation under my watch. And the Senate committee that conducted
investigations into privatisation found nothing. The findings also
showed that more than 80 per cent of privatised companies were either
doing very well or not worse off than being under the control of the
government. There is nowhere in the world where an 80 per cent success
rate equals failure.
How much have the recommendations
by the Presidential Committee on Power Supply Improvement been
implemented and do you think the cabal in the sector will ever allow
stable power supply?
The Presidential Committee on Power
Supply was set up by President Obasanjo, not ‘formed’ by me. It operated
for some three months only and succeeded in raising our generation
capacity from 1,500 to 3,200 megawatts. We made far reaching
recommendations to accelerate the completion of the National Independent
Power Project, but the (Umaru) Yar’adua-Jonathan administrations did
not focus on implementing them. The Economic Team in the Obasanjo years
based a lot of the reform ideas on applying market forces within a
well-structured and properly regulated system. Every government policy
has potential winners and losers, and the interests that may be affected
could deploy resources to entrench their advantage. It is the duty of
government to develop and implement policy within this minefield.
Power supply is an area that will
continue to require substantial investments, close monitoring and
effective regulation. That is where attention should be focussed, not on
celebrating minuscule additions to the paltry total generation capacity
of 3,200MW the Obasanjo administration left behind in April 2007.
The National Identity Card
Project, which you spearheaded, has been widely criticised as been a
drain pipe and not meeting the expectation of the people. What was the
challenge with the project?
After the fiasco of the SAGEM identity
card project and the scandal associated with it, the Obasanjo government
decided on a new approach. What we suggested was a new identification
system that was sufficiently rigorous and technologically advanced to be
integrated across all the government agencies that collected personal
information. And that could be accessed by banks and other companies to
verify identity. Each enrolled citizen was to be given a smartcard,
which could also be a payment card.
We designed a private sector-led project
for the new identity scheme and we selected the team to deliver the
project, led by the current Director-General of the National Identity
Management Commission shortly before we left office.
It is disappointing that the team has
not delivered the project as envisaged and that the NIMC leadership has
made it a project depending on the government treasury, rather than the
initial vision of a private sector led investment.
In the course enforcing the master
plan of the Federal Capital Territory, many structures, including a
house belonging to the then Peoples Democratic Party chairman, were
demolished. You’ve said you have no regrets but your critics maintain
that the exercise was to witch-hunt some people.
I did my duty in Abuja without fear or
favour and President Obasanjo gave me the support I needed to do the
job. Which of the demolitions has been reversed? Tell me if you know of
any house that was removed that should not have been.
Is it true that you once
considered succeeding former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo but that
some powerful forces in the PDP botched your ambition?
If you have read my book, ‘The
Accidental Public Servant,’ you will see that my prominence in the
Obasanjo government was because of the many assignments I was asked to
handle, rather than any ambition. I have never had any ambition for any
public office.
It was widely believed that you
went on self-exile at the end of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s
administration because you stepped on toes while in office. Whose toes
did you step on and have you been forgiven?
The Obasanjo government ended in May
2007 and I remained in Nigeria until June 2008, when I went abroad for
further studies. Subsequent events compelled me to remain outside my
country, upon completion of my studies. Umaru Yar’Adua was after me and I
took prudent measures against presidential mischief. As for stepping on
toes, I know I did my job to the best of my ability and ensured that
people did not violate rules the way they were accustomed to.
You were appointed member of the
National Energy Council in September 2007 by the late Yar’Adua’s
administration but you resigned your appointment in June 2008. What
caused this?
I attended only one meeting of the
Energy Council – that was the inaugural meeting in September 2007. By
June 2008, there was no illusion that I would attend another one. I
resigned membership of the council and left Nigeria in June 2008 to be a
Mason Fellow at Harvard University. There was no point being member of a
moribund council that, in any case, I would have no time for.
Under same administration, you,
along with Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Alhaji Lawal
Batagarawa, Mrs. Nenadi Usman, and Chief Andy Uba were reportedly
accused of committing treason by encouraging military insurrection. Why
would you have done that?
I am hearing this for the first time and
I am sure some of the people you named will also be similarly surprised
at your revelation. It is unfortunate that President Umaru Yar’Adua
collected around himself some of the most insecure people around. Like
the many featherweights that have blighted Africa, Yar’adua and his gang
tried to criminalise all opposition, to conflate dissent and treason
always. Elected to lead democratic systems, they approached the job with
the mind-sets of absolute rulers. They never learn the lessons of
history.
Does it mean your book, “Umaru
Yar’Adua – Great Expectations, Disappointing Outcomes,” was a fight back
against supporters of the Yar’Adua administration?
I did not write a book with that title.
What you cite as a book is actually an essay I wrote as a student at
Harvard. It is a narrative of the person, politics and performance of
Yar’Adua from my vantage position of knowing Yar’Adua since 1972.
Many believe you’re being too
critical of President Jonathan’s administration. Would you admit that
there are problems with Obasanjo’s economic policies, making the current
administration to modify or scrap some of them?
As a citizen of this country, I reserve
the right to exercise my freedom of speech as I deem fit. Have you seen
or read any coherent rebuttal of my articles on the public policy,
spending priorities and poor management of national resources by this
government? If such critical comments help the government to deliver
better outcomes, would it not be to the benefit of the country, and will
they not get the credit? No public policy is so perfect that it cannot
be improved upon, but doing nothing is not an option when we have six
million babies being born every year to think about.
In your book, The Accidental
Public Servant, you said former President Olusegun Obasanjo went on his
knees to seek his vice, Atiku Abubakar’s cooperation with his second
term bid? Atiku had said it was only him and Obasanjo that were in the
room. How did you know about it?
Are you an eyewitness to everything you
report as a journalist? If only two of them were in the room and
everyone in government circles then heard the story, who do you think
related the story? Has anyone denied that it happened?
culled from punch
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