El-Rufai: The perception and the reality


Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai of Kaduna state is a classical victim of the yawning gap between perception and reality. He furnishes a proof of the deep gulf between reality and appearance. Perception, like appearance, is deceitful, dangerously misleading, and extremely damaging. Unfortunately, these are two notorious words that have largely shaped the reaction of most traducers of El-Rufai,  who by the way, they have never personally encountered. 

El-Rufai’s traducers are always in denial, even on matters as straightforward as the quantum of foreign investments that he has attracted to Kaduna state, and the improvement of internally generated revenue, from a paltry N12 billion in 2015 to N50.7 billion by 2021. 

The naysayers often overlook the facts in front of their noses, and bury their faces in the sands of erroneous perception. Their spurious and laughable argument is that due to the security challenges no investor will dare invest in Kaduna state. Of course, nobody can deny the security challenges facing many parts of the country, Kaduna inclusive. That they deny verifiable facts of Kaduna state’s outstanding success in attracting foreign investments,  visible even to blind, is evident of the depth of the problem. 

The investments include, but not limited to, the commissioning of Olams Feeds, Hatchery and Flour Company, Tomatoes Jos, the Mahrinda Tractor Plant, and more. Unfortunately, these investments, amounting to over $2.8 billion, have not changed the opinion of hateful opponents. Again, it’s a case of wrong perception standing in the way of self-evident realities.

So, obviously, the hate of Governor El-Rufai bothers on a perplexing negative perception, as opposed to the reality. For instance, some of his rabid haters will swear by whatever they believe in, that he is a religious bigot, based on the continuous falsehoods dished out by vested interests. Again, the facts prove otherwise. For instance, he never knew that Ibrahim, his late aide-de-camp, was a Christian, until some self righteous people, angry that he was surrounded by too many Christians, brought it to his attention. But it  changed nothing, as Ibrahim remained his ADC, as minister and in his first term as governor of Kaduna state. Same with Peter, his personal assistant and later deputy chief of staff for over 30 years. There are too many other Christians around him, including Altine, the Director-General of the Kaduna State Information Geographical Service, from Adamawa state, that he dragged out of retirement, to replicate the success of the Abuja Geographical Services.

For some more charitable opponents, El-Rufai’s self-confidence is nothing but sheer arrogance, a tragic charge, because in reality, the man is humility personified. So many of those who loathe him, do so because they have swallowed the lies vigorously pushed out against him, hook, line and sinker. The other allegation, closely tied in to his alleged arrogance, is that he prides himself as having a monopoly of knowledge. Again, it’s an allegation that falls flat, as times without number, he has publicly acknowledged “copying” some policies from left, right and center. Being learned, he knows only God is. 

For instance, he acknowledged copying his education policies from Rauf Aregbesola, former governor of Osun state while, the public service reforms have their root from Singapore, where an efficient public service made a huge difference. The only difference, is that El-Rufai, as a good copycat, painstakingly improves on what he copied, and with the benefit of insight avoids the pitfalls of those before him. Like the saying goes, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. 
Clearly, El-Rufai has made enemies, very powerful ones, but all in the course of his public service. And it wasn’t as if he set out to make these enemies. But his policies  impacted negatively on the so-called enemies, who resorted to feeding the public the large doses of negatives that have shaped their perceptions of him. 

His enemies are either those who have scores to settle, from his days as the director-general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), or as minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). El-Rufai’s high crime is serving with dedication and total commitment, which unfortunately many Nigerian public servants lack. 

The first group holds El-Rufai solely responsible for their failure to acquire any of the juicy privatised enterprises under the privatisation and commercialisation programme of President Olusegun Obasanjo administration. While the second set are the so called “victims” of his unwavering commitment to the restoration of the Abuja masterplan, which had been bastardised. 

There is the third group, which currently appears to be the most active, comprising the likes of former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, some elements in the Musa Ya’ardua administration, and his “new friends” in the All Progressives Congress (APC). The Atiku group first launched its attacks in 2003, as part of the fallout of the President Obasanjo versus Atiku war. By 2007, the Yar’adua people had started their own demonisation war. El-Rufai was subjected to an unending investigation,  including the ridiculous allegation that he pocketed over N34 billion, proceeds of the monetisation of government properties. He was eventually forced into self-exile. 
By 2017, his “new friends” in the ruling APC, like Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose legitimate ambition El-Rufai is strongly opposed to, for the greater interest of Nigeria, and some elements in the North who acknowledge him as a credible choice in the 2023 permutations, intensified the campaign of calumny against him, with Senator Shehu Sani as the arrow head.

It’s a tragedy that El-Rufai’s reward for the sterling service, the willingness to serve with unwavering commitment, blunt refusal to sacrifice principles on the altar of political correctness, is an intense demonisation campaign and being accused of every imaginable crime, except, of course, for the huge causalities of the Nigerian civil war.

For a nation that needs every hand on deck to develop, the implication of the concerted demonisation of Nasir El-Rufai is not only that competent hands are forced to keep away from politics, but that charlatans will continue to run the country in their ugly image and likeness. There is also an alarming absence of elite consensus about the direction the country should head, talk less of the medley of hard measures required to make things change for the better. China is an example of what a determined country can achieve based on elite consensus. In 40 years, China moved from a poverty-stricken country to attain first world status. They lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made the country the second largest economy in the world.
Generally, Nigerians lack patience for the long term plans. They are ever always in a hurry. Nigerians clamour for development, but they seem to prefer the easy way out. They want omelette, but without breaking the eggs. 

Now, back to El-Rufai. You’d ask, why is it difficult for people who celebrated his works in Abuja, to make the necessary connections, and  the realisation that the well-packaged negative narratives against him originated from the dislodged mafia trying to get even with a man who has consistently given his all in the service of his motherland? The answer, is perception, because people want to believe the worst. 

El-Rufai’s other political crime was persuading then Major-General Muhammadu Buhari to contest the 2015 elections, which led to the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan, though, from the South-south zone, the South-east had appropriated him. This is the fundamental reason El-Rufai is in the bad books of some people from both zones. The real first crime was giving life to the first ever successful merger of political parties, which led to the defeat of an incumbent government. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be a victim of an organised campaign of calumny. 

Lastly, if he didn’t contest the governorship of the deeply divided Kaduna state, notorious for ethno-religious riots, his opponents wouldn’t have cashed in on the security challenges to paint him black. Again, because their master is clearly not an option for either the presidency or vice in the 2023 general elections permutations, supporters of Tinubu are after his jugular. 

The perception of El-Rufai as a supporter of terrorists only gained traction because it fits into the carefully crafted narrative, so its easy for some to believe this fallacy. Otherwise, they would have questioned the tale bearers; why tag a man, who in 2015 wrote the president to declare the bandits as terrorists, so as to enable the armed forces legitimately go after them, by any stretch of imagination, a supporter of terrorists? 

It took the 2021 local government elections, in which the opposition party won some LG councils, for Nigerians to come to terms with the fact El-Rufai stridently believes in the principles of democracy, being divergent parties and positions, while agreeing to sheathe their primal instincts so they can peacefully coexist, under an agreed set of rules. Before now, the perception about him was that of a maximum dictator, when in reality he is a consensus builder. 
So, like the other perceptions about him, time, that faithful friend, will certainly demolish them all. Though in the short term, the perceptions about him have been extremely damaging, but the man trudges on against all odds, and has evidently made indelible marks in the sands of time. 

The media fixation with El-Rufai will not stop, not with the 2023 elections around the corner. Rather, it will get worse, because he will always be a target of his traducers. Unfortunately, they have generous access to multiple platforms to spread their falsehoods. At the long run, truth and reality will surely triumph and outlive falsehood and hate-driven wrong perception.

Ado writes from Kaduna.