Nasir El-Rufai: Other sides of a genius

By Abubakar Dan Bala

It is not generally known if Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State. has a set of rotten teeth. Again, it has not been scientifically proved that a dirty mouth leads to frequent use of foul language, pathological lying, mischief making and an amazing capacity to savage the reputation of other people without batting an eyelid. What is widely known, for sure, is that El-Rufai is seriously afflicted with these and many other anti-social behaviours emanating from misuse of the tongue.

It makes you wonder why a petit-sized man, derogatorily refereed to as “gentle” by his friends naturally equipped with “elephantine brain”, should decide to always use his talent to cause social discord, to the detriment of others, including family members, friends and close political associates. El-Rufai is the classic example of a psychopathic person who takes immense delight in hurting or denigrating others in order to look great, sound right or get whatever it is that he desires. In psychology, the El-Rufai persona can be described as sadism, meaning that he deliberately hurts others simply for the pleasure he derives from doing so.

Widely known as a pathological liar, El-Rufai again stirred the hornet’s nest on Monday, January 27, this year, when he showed up at the “strategic gathering” of opposition figures in Abuja.There, he delivered a stinking denunciations of his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and, by extension, a condemnation of the governance style of President Bola Tinubu who had rightfully consigned him to the cold freezer of political irrelevance. In his well reported diatribe, El-Rufai alleged that “illiterates, semi-illiterates and cunning people” occupied leadership positions in the ruling party, leading to “the poor leadership we have today.” Continuing, he said, “I no longer recognize the APC. No party organ has met in two years; no caucus, no NEC, nothing. You don’t even know if it is a one-man show, or a zero-man show.”

The irony is that as governor El-Rufai installed a stark illiterate as acting chairman of the party in Kaduna State following the election of the late Architect Bala Bantex as deputy governor and a Chief of Staff that was dismissed from the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA). He never practices what he preaches.

The imperial emperor El-Rufai probably didn’t expect the response to his false alarm and his unprovoked and one-sided war at the national level. And while his home state governor, Senator Uba Sani, wisely kept silent and allowed a dishnourable man to keep fouling the waters with thoughtless speech, his supporters have refused to keep quiet. Governor Sani rightly challenged El-Rufai to state what he did differently while he was in the position of authority and made it very clear that El-Rufai’s recent attack on the APC and the President were baseless, ill-motivated and not primed for the good of the commonwealth. There is nothing untoward or earthshaking about what Governor Sani said, nor did he even take a direct swipe at the ill-mannered midget who chooses always to wear the toga of an intellectual elephant.

Again, it is quite commendable that Governor Sani did not resort to lies, the use of offensive or uncouth language in his televised reaction to El-Rufai’s malicious tirade. It shows the nature of the teeth in his mouth. Indeed, Senator Sani’s reaction confirmed his character as a decent man and thoroughbred democrat that would never employ foul language or throw tantrums while making his point in the public space. Even as a pro-democracy activist of yore, while imbued with youthful exuberance, Comrade Sani had built up a reputation for always sticking to the facts, and focusing on the ultimate goal, in the best interest of the people.

Yet, the carefully selected words, measured tone and mature response of the governor infuriated the mercurial El-Rufai and made him to cascade his war of attrition down to Kaduna State. Since then, El-Rufai and his hirelings have been throwing killer jabs at Governor Uba Sani for daring to speak in defence of President Tinubu and the Federal Government against the backdrop of El-Rufai’s ill-motivated diatribe.

It is an established fact that those who seek to denigrate others unwittingly do more harm to themselves. As El-Rufai fine-tunes his evil plot against others, his disgusting character continues to destroy what is left of his questionable legacy. This is the same El-Rufai whom President Olusegun Obasanjo aptly and appropriately described as “a pathological purveyor of untruths and half-truths, with little or no regard for integrity.”

Indeed, anyone who wants to fully understand the stormy petrel called El-Rufai must peruse his apt characterization by former President Obasanjo, the leader who has made it a duty to carefully study and codify the characters of his close associates. Of El-Rufai he further said: “I did not hesitate to point out his naivety and immaturity, talk less of his inability to give honour to whom it is due.” No, El-Rufai cannot give honour to another human because he is of the grossly mistaken view that only he deserves to be honoured.

Obasanjo continues: “My vivid recollection of (Nasir El-Rufai) is his penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories and his inability to sustain loyalty for long.” Though the former President recognized that El-Rufai’s “petit size” housed an “elephantine brain’’, he nevertheless still dismissed the midget as nothing but a “malicious liar” who cannot be trusted.

Governor Uba Sani, a refreshing sharp contrast to El-Rufai, will not descend into the gutter of pathological lying nor follow El-Rufai’s shameful course of debauchery in dealing with the many difficult challenges that El-Rufai continues to create.

Although El-Rufai and his hirelings left a trail of sleazy financial misdeeds in Kaduna State, to the tune of over N423 billion in unaccounted public funds, which has severely limited the ability of the state government to execute as many impactful projects as Senator Uba Sani would have loved, the administration has not gone after El-Rufai with the level of aggression that is commensurate with the perceived gravity of financial mismanagement that took best in the face of daunting obstacles that El-Rufai created, still a delusional imperial El-Rufai prefers to go about throwing stones from his glass house.

Among other things, El-Rufai has accused Governor Sani of witch-hunting him and those who worked closely with him during his eight years of financial brigandage. He recently alleged that Governor Sani was selfishly and wrongfully defending the Federal Government to show appreciation for the bailout funds Kaduna State has been receiving from the Tinubu administration. Of course, he was only living up to his billing each time he tells a lie to impugn the character of Senator Sani. But what El-Rufai refused to acknowledge is that the Buhari administration extended the same gestures to him.

If the truth must be told, the good people of Kaduna State should be grateful to President Tinubu for his continuous financial assistance to their state, without which it would have been nearly impossible for Governor Sani to execute any meaningful project, due to the financial mess that Nasir El-Rufai left behind. In fact, his regime fed fat on the massive cash transfers that President Buhari repeatedly doled out to the state governors, but while some prudent governors paid back much of the bailout funds, Nasir El-Rufai deferred his own repayment, further increasing the burden of his successor.

Again, why does Nasir El-Rufai revel in controversies? Mind you, he is not an ordinary man on the street who seeks to make a name or some gain by savaging the reputation of people in power and needlessly kicking up dust every now and then. On the contrary, El-Rufai is an accomplished personality, who ought to be basking in the euphoria of self-fulfillment, with much gratitude to his maker. As former governor of the influential Kaduna state; a one-time Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and former Director, Bureau of Public Enterprises, El-Rufai has had more than a fair share of roles in prominent public positions. An accomplished Quantity Surveyor, this self-acclaimed “accidental Public Servant’’, strayed into politics from a background of very successful private practice in the building industry, from where he already amassed enough fortunes for a lifetime.

Ordinarily, you would expect a man of this rich professional pedigree to have overgrown the antisocial behaviour of creating frictions and fanning the embers of discord in the polity. But that is not the case with Nasir El-Rufai. Perhaps, because his foray into public service was purely accidental, this “mighty” midget of a man had not been properly groomed in the delicate etiquette of the civil service, which extols loyalty, decorum, diplomacy, tact and respect for the rights of others.

El-Rufai seems to have lost it all. He totally exemplifies what President Obanasjo said that he is: “Divisive, bigoted, hateful and completely un-statesmanlike”.

This psychopathic character has made so many public statements that could have sent him to jail, if the tables were turned. At the height of banditry in Sothern Kaduna, when all well-meaning individuals across ethnic lines prayed for peace, El-Rufai indulged in bigotry: “we will write this for all to read. Anyone, soldier or not, that kills the Fulani, takes a loan payable one day no matter how long it takes.”

Responding to the alleged possibility of foreign election observer missions meddling in the Nigerian general elections, in the run up to 2019 national polls, the tactless Nasir El-Rufai, an elected governor, went on air to threaten that: “The person who will come and interfere will go back in body bags because nobody will come to Nigeria and tell us how to run our country.”

On September 8, 2014, when Boko Haram miscreants made life brutish and short in the North East axis, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai lied that Christians were behind the Boko Haram, funding and controlling it to tarnish the name of Islam. Till today, nobody has established a link between the Boko Haran insurgents and any local Christian organisation or individual. Yet, the man who delights in wicked lies has never deemed it fit to apologize.

As Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, El-Rufai was in his usual elements, brimming fire with and brimstone, as he bulldozed structures without respect to any known rules of civil engagement. Though he justified his brazen conduct and wanton recklessness on the grounds that he was zealous to restore the FCT Master plan, he also went ahead with questionable revocations for alleged personal benefits. In 2012, the EFCC arraigned him for corruption and gross abuse of office. For instance, investigators found that El-Rufai maliciously revoked the ownership of Plot 1201 in the highbrow Asokoro District, a choice piece of land belonging to the defunct PHCN, and illegally allocated it, along with over 10 other plots, to himself and his friends.

Arraigned with el-Rufai were Altine Jibrin, who served as Director-General of the Abuja Geographic Information System and Ismail Iron, who served as AGIS General Manager, both under Nasir El-Rufai as FCT Minister. The EFCC charged the trio for abuse of public office and illegal conversion of a land meant for the construction of transmitting/injection sub-stations of the PHCN in Asokoro.

In all, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai comes of as man eminently qualified for prime position in the Hall of Shame. Unfortunately, our society seems to be so heavily polluted that all manners of scallywags find the space to operate, and even masquerade as honourable men, acting the roles of movers and shakers of events in the political. In the particular case of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, this is very unfortunate!!!