but you can only succeed under certain conditions. Specifically, we need you to come home when you
are financially independent and can stomach the pay cut that you will face when entering public
service. You should make no mistake about it – you must come home at some point. We cannot
improve as a nation without attracting our best and brightest human resources to the public sector. As
things stand currently, we have surrendered the bulk of our political space to the dishonourable, the
incompetent and worse, to the criminally-minded. This is the basic problem of Nigeria. The brightest
Nigerians are either abroad, or at home in academia, in the military or the private sector - particularly
in the telecommunications, oil and gas or financial services industries. This is an undeniable fact; the
dregs of our society dominate the politics and have created a negative image that makes talented
people spurn helping the country. So to those in the Diaspora who have achieved financial
independence through merit and hard work, I say this: good for you, earn what you deserve which
appears impossible to earn at home. Nonetheless, unless at some point you make the rational decision
to come back and get your hands dirty with politics or public service, Nigeria will never work in our
lifetimes.
This book is also an appeal to persons that have held public office to document their experiences and
tell their sides of the story. I have made such appeals repeatedly to two persons in particular -
Mallam Adamu Ciroma and Professor Jerry Gana. These exceptional individuals have served in three
or four different administrations. Their public service record and personal stories would have helped
first timers like me when sworn in as a Minister of the Government of the Federation on July 16,
2003. Alas, they had not, and still have not. While continuing to nag them to write, I hope this story
will nudge them (and others) a little in the direction of documenting their rich and varied experiences.
Another prominent Nigerian whose grass to grace story, complete with gubernatorial, ministerial, and
presidential experiences, plus field experience in civil war, needs telling is General Muhammadu
Buhari. His life story, snippets of which he has shared with me and Pastor Tunde Bakare at various
points will paint the picture of a nation whose leaders at one time, professed, pursued and practised
social justice. How we got to where we now are as a country will be apparent from Buhari's memoir,
and I am gratified that our collective nudging has finally got him working on one.
Finally, I am writing this book to put on record my version of events, in my voice and in my own
hand. Whether you are already familiar with the broad outlines of my story, or you are hearing my
name for the first time, please read this with the following facts in mind: in the intervening two years
between the time Umaru Yar’Adua emerged as the president of Nigeria and the onset of writing this
book, I have suffered a lot of harassment. My house in Abuja has been invaded once by security
agencies with my family imprisoned for hours. [1] Warrants have been obtained thrice to search my
house for suspected “subversive materials.” [2] I have been serially investigated by various
committees of the National Assembly[3] and by virtually every regulatory and law enforcement
agency in Nigeria.[4] I have been accused of phantom crimes and declared a wanted man by the
Yar’Adua administration with empty but media-grabbing threats of arrest by the Interpol, [5]
extradition[6] and so on. Yet the same government ordered all Nigerian diplomatic missions not to
renew my passport when I completed my studies and announced plans to return home!
In the face of politically motivated persecution of my person, friends and family, I have protested and
maintained my innocence of all the allegations and consistently issued statements to explain my own
side of the story. I have filed several lawsuits against the federal government and its agencies, [7]
companies and individuals[8] that have attempted to impugn my integrity and mounted a vigorous
defence against the single criminal case the Nigerian government has launched against me. [9] These
are all ongoing developments and remain open questions as I write this story. At my age and in my
political circumstance, writing a book that attempts to open the black box of politics and governance
in Nigeria is a very risky endeavour. Deciding what experiences to reveal and what to leave out,
exposing oneself to risks of being accused of having an agenda even when there is none, and avoiding
early and premature judgments continue to be issues at every point of writing. There is also the
greater risk of what I have written being used as evidence of some undesirable tendency of mine.
My many friends and family members played important roles in guiding me in my attempts to resolve
some of these conflicts. I take solace in this regard in the words of Nelson Mandela to the effect that
only a fool refuses to change his mind when confronted with new facts and better information. My life
is still evolving, and I am still learning, so no views expressed here are as sacrosanct as a religious
text. I am open to change as I learn more. I am still grateful to my friends for helping me to understand
better some of these tricky matters.
My life and personal history are of little interest except insofar as certain events and experiences
have shaped my preparation for public service. My years in government – about nine in all, and the
aftermath – are too short to present more than a snapshot of the challenges of being in public service
and politics in a developing country like Nigeria. So this is neither a full-scale autobiography nor a
memoir because I think it is premature at my age, and I have achieved too little to write either an
autobiography or a memoir. This is simply a story of my years in government and after; the
autobiographical style and context just lay the foundation for why I think the way I think and why I
took the actions I took when I was in public service.
What I found in my public service career was sobering, to say the least. I would not say my
experiences made me more hopeful, or more cynical; and while I found some aspects of public
service a pleasant surprise, there were certainly others that I consider a big disappointment. For
instance, the aftermath of my years in government, during which I experienced betrayal by some
friends and relations, the concoction of falsehoods against me and my loyal friends, the smear and
persecution, and the widespread suspicion that once a minister even for a day, one must have looted
public funds are both typical and painful experiences, but part of the price one pays in order to make
one’s nation function even slightly better. Ultimately, the experience is hardly different from the
normal pattern in human life: the dissonance between what one anticipates and what one actually
finds – no matter how much one studies something, reads about it, thinks about it, hears about it - is no
substitute for one to actually do and experience it directly. This is the crux of the story I intend to
narrate here.
In narrating this story, I have tried my best to be accurate and factual, and in describing persons and
events with minimal judgment and use of adjectives. I have just one motive in mind - to tell the story
of my public service years to prepare the younger
generation for the sorts of challenges they may face.
As a human being, I am bound to have erred or recollected events differently. I apologize in advance
to those that would beg to differ with my version of events, and suggest they should write theirs. That
is the only way more and more people would understand our government and governance, for the
better, too.
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
Abuja, November, 2012
Prologue:
The Beginning of the End
“No third term – no Nigeria.”
– President Olusegun Obasanjo, February 2006
There it was – confirmation from the man himself of what I, not to mention the rest of the country, had
suspected for months. The words hung in the night time air as I contemplated how to respond. I knew
immediately what I was thinking though. I was thinking that he was wrong and that this sort of
manoeuvring was not at all what I signed up for when I first agreed to join the Obasanjo
Administration in 1999. Hearing President Obasanjo saying these words did not surprise me as much
as it disappointed me. For it was obvious to anyone who was even remotely paying attention at that
point in early 2006, that there was some sort of effort underway to secure him a third presidential
term. What had up until that point remained elusive was any clear confirmation that the man himself
had thought about it, wanted it, or was even aware of it. There, that evening, in the lush gardens
outside the main residence but within the sprawling estate known as the Presidential Villa, with a
single phrase, the president had emerged from behind the shadows of plausible deniability.
I do not remember where or when I first became aware of the actual phrase, ‘plausible deniability’,
but the gist of it, that some powerful person might arrange for some act to be undertaken on their
behalf via a third party in order to avoid any connection with the said act, had by 2006 become an
Obasanjo trademark. With the benefit of hindsight and the roller coaster ride that was my relationship
with the former president, it is difficult for me to pinpoint exactly when things began to go wrong, but
I think it was in early 2005 when we on the economic reform team began to hear rumours of a plan for
a third presidential term. As was usual for me, after hearing various versions of it a couple of times, I
spoke about it with my closest working colleagues at the time, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman Nuhu Ribadu and Special
Assistant to the President on Budget Monitoring Oby Ezekwesili. They said they were hearing similar
rumours. Abuja is a city of rumours, so we let it pass. However, by February 2005, when the list of
all government nominees to the National Political Reform Conference was made public, we thought
that we should ask the President to confirm or deny the rumours. So as is usual with me, I went to
President Obasanjo for the second time in two weeks to raise the subject.
“Mr. President we have been hearing stories about this tenure extension. Is it something in
contemplation?” I asked him. His first response I thought odd, but it was only just the beginning.
“Look at me very well, Minister,” he said. “Do you think I am looking for a job? I came out
of prison, I was on my farm, I was begged to come and do this job. Now that we are about to finish
this job, do you honestly think I would be looking for another job?”
“Well, are you looking for another job, Mr. President?” I asked.
“Certainly not,” he said. “I am looking forward to May 29, 2007, I will go back to my farm
and that is it.”
“So there is no plan for any constitutional amendment on term limits, Mr. President?”
“Certainly not.”
I left the president’s office with a sense of relief after this conversation. I believed him because he
was quite definite about it. In fact, he was a little bit irritated about my questions. To be fair to
President Obasanjo, up until what came to be known to us as the ‘Third Term’ debacle, he was a man
of his words that did not entertain rumours and gossip about such serious national issues. If one said
something accusatory or unfair about another official to Obasanjo, it was typical of him to call the
person immediately, put one and the person on speaker phone and demand that one repeat what one
just said so that the person would have a chance to defend his honour! With that likelihood, one learnt
never to tell Obasanjo something that one could not defend easily with facts and figures in the
possible presence of the persons mentioned in the ‘rumour’.
The rumours continued throughout most of 2005. Because a few of us in the economic reform team –
Ngozi, Oby, Nuhu, and I – were considered very close to Obasanjo, many assumed us to be in the
know about it. We were visibly implementing an economic reform programme that was on track: the
Nigerian economy was booming, accumulating huge foreign reserves and a big savings account from
excess oil revenues. However, for many outside our inner circle, these achievements were the
justification for the third term project.
waiting for a flight from Lagos to Abuja in October 2010 during which he blamed the economic team
for the failed third term attempt. He heard that we authored a memo to Obasanjo making a case for
tenure elongation. Others take speeches Chukwuma Soludo and I made at the Murtala Mohammed
Memorial Lecture in February 2007 about the Asian Tigers ‘political continuity’ as basis of
attributing ideas of many years of PDP rule to us and other economic team members. All of these are
innocent misrepresentations and completely untrue as far as I know.
The truth of the matter was that the third term project was believed by many of us in the
administration, to have been initiated by Lagos businessmen who were looking to keep the economy
undisturbed by a transfer of power. Since this economic boom all happened on Obasanjo’s watch,
according to the assumption, these Lagos businessmen wanted Obasanjo to have an extra four years. It
was also around that time that some of our seminal macroeconomic achievements were realized.
Among them, we got our $30 billion of Paris Club debt written off, and with the money saved
government contracted to build seven new power stations using gas in the Niger Delta and South-
West, and a brand new, modern national railway system. We also streamlined the management of the
seaports for private sector use so that it would be easier to import and export. Many huge steps were
being taken all in the same year and I think the business community saw that as a clear signal that if
we fixed power and transportation, the biggest bottlenecks to business in Nigeria would be removed.
Who these Lagos businessmen were that were behind this idea remained unconfirmed, but several
names were mentioned eventually and these repeatedly made the rounds in many circles in Abuja.
Festus Odimegwu, the then chief executive officer of Nigerian Breweries, and Ndi Okereke Onyiuke,
the head of the Stock Exchange, were alleged to have started it. They were reportedly supported by
Nigeria's foremost industrialist and richest man Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu of the United Bank for
Africa, Cecilia Ibru of Oceanic Bank and Jim Ovia of Zenith Bank.
The logic behind the rumours is
that the companies these people represented benefited on an unprecedented scale under our tenure and
a third Obasanjo term surely would have enabled them to consolidate their gains and live happily
ever after! Whether these rumours were true or not, fair or unfair, the presumption that these
individuals and organizations benefited from the Obasanjo administration in the past, and stood to
benefit if it remained in office, made virtually everyone in government declare them the prime movers
of the tenure extension plan. I sounded out a few of them that I was in touch with and all denied
knowledge of any such plot - just like Obasanjo!
The rumours, of course, increased. Unsatisfied, I decided to try again, and this time I approached
Obasanjo’s Chief of Staff, General Abdullahi Mohammed, who was also a mentor of sorts and had
been close to Obasanjo for more than 40 years and asked him what he knew. His response was that he
had certainly heard the rumours, had asked Obasanjo the same question and Obasanjo had denied
everything. To me, this was very interesting, because if Obasanjo denied the existence of the third
term project to his chief of staff it meant that either Obasanjo was not behind the project or the chief
of staff was not trusted enough. The prospect of the chief of staff lying was, in my view, not a
possibility – he was one of the few people I believed had integrity in public service in Nigeria at that
time (and up till the time I am writing this). If he had known of such an effort, he would have admitted
to me, but request that I should not share the knowledge with anyone. So I decided to believe
Obasanjo was not behind the tenure elongation idea and that this was a private initiative of other
politicians and businessmen trying to feather their nests.
Yet the rumours persisted. So early in September 2005, I went back to Obasanjo again and he had the