El-Rufa’i: From Accidental Public Servant to Accidental Governor -By Abdu Abdullahi

If you have critically read the book, The Accidental Public Servant, authored by Kaduna’s governor Nasir El-Rufa’i, you would have probably celebrated him for his intellectual acumen.

Undoubtedly, his brooding analyses on certain national events in that publication are inspiring, embedded with fascinating realities and sound illustrations for effecting a desirable change in Nigeria for which he would be a prime mover and bequeath a befitting legacy that will linger for years.

Evidently, his insightful knowledge and understanding of socioeconomic cum political issues he raised are highly superb, corroborative and meritorious. That he is a prolific writer with the deplorable condition of Nigeria printed in his heart as suggested by his presentation of lamentations needs no emphasis.

In a highly classical and meticulous adherence to effective communication, the fundamental themes he deals with in the book, especially the dynamics of power and how the nation is broken into a great casualty of political gimmick of the power elites would compel you to believe that when he is gifted with the mantle of leadership, he would strike a big difference by becoming a leader with a common touch to justify leadership in all its ramifications and discard the wrong notion of followers must justify their followership.

But on assumption of governmental duty, El-Rufa’i started unfolding an obnoxious approach to governance that created confusion and instantly made him controversial. He made some daring moves that attributed him to be a unique character trying to put a square peg in a round hole. To our greatest bewilderment, he would not like to develop the template for masses oriented government but would prefer to evolve El-Rufa’i oriented government in which he would see himself only as what matters, he would think the way other people would not think and to worship his exclusive ideas as the only religion that would be good for the people. Perhaps, it was a calculated attempt to attain the level of cheap popularity. If that is case, then he has served cheap popularity to its fullest design to the detriment of the general joy of the same people that voted him into power.

If El-Rufai is teaching us that the best approach to governance is to be unlimitedly coersive and stupendously arrogant as he has proudly demonstrated, then we should all troop to Borno state to study a governor with a great passion for humanity. Governor Zulum’s emerging piety is a challenge to El-Rufai’s sadistic acts that produce turbulent attacks to the feeble citizens. While El-Rufa’i will not wear a human face to make his people happy, Zulum is humanly dynamic to show great passion to the people that are torn apart by lingering insecurity. Thus, one of the best ways to evaluate El-Rufa’i and expose his inadequacies is juxtaposing him along side Zulum, the people’s governor and not El-Rufai’s version of the governor’s governor!

El-Rufa’i is believed to be one of the governors with overwhelming influence on President Muhammadu Buhari claiming himself that he is on the side of Buhari to do whatever he likes. To give a typical example here were the appointments of Hajia Zainab Ahmed, the current Minister of Finance and the appointment of the sacked Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority, Hadiza Bala Usman. In both instances, he was instrumental to their consent by the president for economic benefits that will prepare him for the next level of politicking.

Owing to his persistent engagement in unnecessary controversies and doing the undesirable actions, the people of Kaduna who have undergone several traumatic episodes under his watch describe him as an ‘irredeemable killjoy and merchant of unhappiness’. This is an accurate depiction of a governor who is always thinking differently from the world of common sense. Only last year, he raised school fees in the Kaduna’s higher institutions. For instance, he arbitrarily raised the tuition fees of students of the Faculty of Medicine in the state owned university from 24,000 to 300,000 thousand Naira to make life more difficult for the common man but his son recently graduated from a London University and was mocking at our failed university system by sharing his photograph of the graduation ceremony.

As if he was the political commandant of our governors, El-Rufa’i was reported to have mobilized and led a team of Northern APC governors who met with Ahmed Bola Tinubu on the support they will render him in preparation of the next year’s presidential elections. Moved by troubling mischievousness, he read out the conditions to be fulfilled by Tinubu as a covenant which will be binding on him to honour and get their political blessings. He mentioned to Tinubu that finance, works and housing, federal capital, agriculture and other key ministries should go to the North. Though a similar scenario transpired when Ahmed Tinubu also presented a prototype template to Muhammadu Buhari when he was desperate to rule Nigeria.

What is however perplexing was the inability of El-Rufa’i to think in advance the cause of the region first. In difficult time like this, the interest of the North has to come first before any other interest. He should have mobilized the governors to convene an emergency summit to discover the causes of banditry in the Northwest with a view to proferring lasting solutions. But that was never in the political mind of El-Rufai.

Recall that in May last year, El-Rufa’i was able to turn Kaduna state into a house of horrors when the labour movement embarked on a 5-day warning strike to compel him rescind his unpopular decision of mass sack of civil servants in the state. NLC president Ayuba Wabba captured El-Rufai’s high hardedness thus, ” The situation of the workers in Kaduna state is so pathetic that thousands of them have been laid off from their sources of livelihood without the state making any effort to pay them their entitlements. Worst still, El-Rufa’i has gone further to increase school fees in public schools thereby making the children of those sacked from their working place without payment to become dropouts”.

In dealing with political opponents, El-Rufa’i derives great pleasure to torment their psychology. In a kind of a Draconian method of settling scores, he ordered for the demolition of the house of one of his political adversaries, Senator Sulaiman Hunkuyi, without notice and for no reason except that the senator was having a parallel political views for which he was entitled to.

After the expiration of his military mentality rule, it would turn out to be a herculean task for the people of Kaduna to count their huge losses incurred as a result of El-Rufai’s large scale arbitrariness. The kind of extreme insensitivity and pomposity he exhibits are not making sense because of the persistent insecurity bedeviling the state for which he has failed to be a good student of unfolding calamities.

In fact, many people have attributed his sheer recklessness as the major driving factor that has rendered the state growing into pieces. His unguided utterances that are often labeled as hate speeches, his anti people policies that have reduced many people to a state of hopelessness are cited as factors among others that have easy linkage with insecurity in the state and has been persisting.

But it is often said that one man’s food is another’s poison. With all these executive excessess deployed to rule the people, his apologists have found him as a celebrated hero, referring to his achievements in the provision of infrastructures. But when these feats are weighed alongside the other side of the untold stories of severe hardships he has inflicted on the same people for whom the structures are meant for, it is clear that the governor and his co- travelers are erroneously influenced by the paradox of doing the right things instead of doing things right.

To elaborate this paradoxical expression, doing the right things means that the mind is not subjected to rational thinking to produce what is normally possible. Such a mind is power intoxicated that it does not recognize the law of doing things right as always superior. The owner of this mind is liable to become inimical to the society because he or she arrogates to himself or herself the power of doing anything he or she considers right even if it is conspicuously harmful to the community and the people are averse. But for those who are believers of doing things right, they are fit for the purpose of reforming the society and triumphing against all odds.

Against this backdrop therefore, there is good news for the people of Kaduna. From today, El-Rufai’s days of political exit as an accidental governor are numbered and the counting starts!