The El Rufai Enigma

He’s probably the most hated as well as the most loved state governor in the land today. Nasir el Rufai sits at the political helm of Kaduna State.

Since 2015 when he came to power as governor, he has been under a barrage of vitriolic criticism both from within and without the state. 

Among the more clear-headed and perceptive public servants of this epoch, his time in Kaduna, six years on, may have obliterated his stellar performances as minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja; his exploits at the now comatose Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE).

You either love el Rufai or you hate him. There seems to be no middle ground for him.

Yours truly has closely followed the trajectories of the petit enfant terrible from his yeoman’s job at Africa Projects which was the hub of the multibillion Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) established by late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha but chaired by incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari in the 90s.

PTF under Buhari, virtually morphed into Africa Projects which was owned by el Rufai and his friends/partners. Hundreds of seven digits contracts were awarded across the country, especially in the north. El Rufai and his friends were in charge. 

PTF which was statutory savings from petrol price hike by the federal government had a huge pot of funds and it delivered infrastructure projects of good quality in large numbers. It was generally agreed that PTF lived up to expectations. It was also a well known fact that el Rufai and partners made good, real good (if we can put it that way).

He and his friends also were hand in gloves with successive military juntas of the 90s, enjoying sweetheart contracts in the burgeoning landscape of a new federal capital territory, Abuja.

With a highly successful professional practice, a heap of money, top-level contacts coupled with a first rate mind expressed in top of the class performances, el Rufai was ready for 3rd Republic politics in 1999.

General Abdulsalami Abubakar who was heading the transition to civil rule after Abacha’s demise appointed him into strategic groups and committees. 

But it was under President Olusegun Obasanjo that el Rufai flowered and achieved national reckoning. In the first term – 1999 to 2003, el Rufai was part of a plucky class, led by Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Vice President, Atiku Abubakar who ran Nigeria’s economy brilliantly well.

In Obasanjo’s 2nd term, el Rufai was akin to the Lord of Abuja, running the FCT like a sheikhdom. He earned enormous clout as Obasanjo almost had him as number two during the period of a fiery feud with his VP Atiku.

A wily politician and master tactician, it was only a matter of time before el Rufai reached for the big ticket. 

In 2014, he won the Kaduna State gubernatorial election under the All Progressives Congress, APC. He won a re-election in 2019.

As governor of Kaduna State, the political capital and probably the foremost state in the north, el Rufai unfurled further. Some say he dissembled while yet some others think he simply came into his true self.

His time as governor would perhaps pass as the most turbulent not to talk of the most tragic and apocalyptic for the multi-polar state.

If Kaduna was the most complicated place to run, el Rufai has made it calamitous in the last six years. To sum it up, the state is easily described as a killing field by observers. If he’s delivering public good, (which he sure would, going by his records as an achiever), the bloody crises on his domain have wiped it all out.

TRAILBLAZING WITH ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES:

The object of this piece, however, is the local government election held in the State recently. This elaborate backgrounding is actually to provide context to a hugely positive side of Governor el Rufai, almost totally overshadowed by the abiding dark side.

The LGA election was held in the 23 councils on the 4th of September 2021. This would be the second time LGA elections were held in Kaduna under el Rufai’s watch and this in itself is remarkable considering that many governors of this epoch have gone through two terms of eight years without a single LGA election. When and where these grassroots polls are conducted, in Nigeria since 1999, they have been disgraceful shams not worthy of the reckoning in a decent society. 

LGA elections are supposed to be done every three years.  el Rufai has kept to this constitutional requirement religiously. 

The most significant aspect of it all is that Governor el Rufai got the Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission (KDSIEC) to deploy electronic voting system in 2018 and has perfected it in 2021 using an advanced Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

LGA elections in Nigeria had been a winner takes all travesty. The sitting governor’s party makes a clean sweep of the polls to the last Councillors. But in the Kaduna LGA elections, the opposition PDP didn’t only win a couple of LGAs, the governor lost his polling unit.

What has happened in the Kaduna LGA polls is actually a subtle revolution in so many ways. First, the electronic voting system has been institutionalized in Kaduna state.

Second, both the national body INEC and other states would no longer have excuses not to follow suit.

Third, the Kaduna example will completely change the nature and outcomes of elections in Nigeria in the years ahead, among numerous other gains.

There’s no gainsaying that the decay and dysfunctional states of our LGA administrations are largely the reason the country is prostrate with inertia and dereliction.

In summary, if the grassroots polls are right and the right people are at the helm in the local councils, Nigeria is bound to return to the path of glory once again. 

And it must be recorded that it took the courage and brilliance of a certain Nasir el Rufai… whom we love to hate! He is indeed an enigma.