Saharareporters has learnt that latest battle is being waged through legal harassment of journalists. El-Rufai has gone to court to ask for billions from a Daily Independent newspaper columnist and editorial board member, Ugochuckwu Ejinkeonye. In a suit filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja, he claimed that the writer in an article titled “El-Rufai: Saint with Soiled Robes” had lowered his reputation in the eyes of right-thinking Nigerians, and so, he would want to reclaim it by getting paid N2.2 billion in damages broken down as: N2 billion for general damages; N100 million for exemplary damages and N800, 000 for legal costs.
Mr. Ejinkeonye wrote the article in his weekly column after the Senate Public Accounts Committee (PAC) discovered several financial wrongdoings, after examining the records of Mallam El-Rufai’s tenure at the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and as FCT minister. The essay, which is reprinted below, critiqued the minister’s style and his many controversial pronouncements and actions.
The suit with docket number FCT/HC/CV/232/04 presided over by Justice Bello comes up on Friday April 28, 2006 in Abuja. The defense attorney barrister JC Obialor will be opening his defense and cross –examining the minister who also listed two other witnesses which include the former minister of information, Chuckwuemeka Chikelu and one Wale Ojemuyiwa. The defense lawyer intends to put El-Rufai in the dock for cross-examination, a position the minister doesn’t intend to find himself at this time.
It is not likely that Chikelu will show up in court to be a witness in this case because of the way he was fired from his post by President Obasanjo last year.
Apart from direct harassment of journalists with the use of police and state security agents, libel suits have become the biggest tools in the hands of Nigerian political leaders to force the media into self-censorship. The libel laws in Nigeria have not been discarded or critically reviewed since independence from Britain in 1960.
Below is the article written by Mr. Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye published on Wednesday September 22, 2004:
Nasir el-Rufai: Saint with soiled robes
Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Lagos, Nigeria
September 22, 2004
Now that the din and blind rage of the Highly Distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (HDSFRN) have been successfully disposed of with at least four carefully crafted, but obviously insincere, apologies, I think that time is now ripe for the FCT Minister, Mr. Nasir el-Rufai, to get himself a low stool at some quiet corner, pause awhile, and try to ask himself, as Prof Chinua Achebe would counsel, where the rain really began to beat him. With the air thoroughly rid of rowdy, incoherent threats from senators by, perhaps, crispy “bulldozers” from Aso Rock, certainly, El-Rufai’s meditation would suffer no distractions.
I am pretty sure that if Mr. El-Rufai would heed my advice, and go about the suggested retreat with utmost sincerity, he would certainly emerge from the soul-searching session more than persuaded that he has become too morally impaired to remain in public office. The greatest asset of a public office holder is credibility. I know that this is a very strange insistence in an administration like Obasanjo’s that clearly makes a big show of its moral disability, but then, Mr. El-Rufai, in a bid to ensure he stood out from the pack, had bored everyone sore with drab sing-songs about his very outstanding moral properties, and it would be interesting to see how he would go on functioning in office after his recent very damaging encounter with his astounding misdeeds in office, though, from the outset, I had had this nagging suspicion that the whole thing about El-Rufai’s righteousness was a mere media-deodorized dubious moral image. But even that meretricious reputation too, now clearly unmasked and unuseful, seems not to have survived the very injurious effect of his latest head-on collusion with the Upper Legislative House.
Nor would the Senate itself come out of it unscathed, because, at the end of the day, whatever impressions the Nigerian people would form about their senators may not be inspired by El-Rufai’s drunken categorization of them as highly distinguished fools, but will to a larger extent be moulded by their capacity and willingness to let patriotism and rule of law moderate their handling of the post-apology chapter of this sordid affair. Indeed, the matter is far beyond an apology from Baba and his insufferably arrogant “son,” and the senate has a responsibility to allay the fears created by El-Rufai’s insidious insinuations, and demonstrate to the Nigerian people that what they are after in this matter is not vengeance but justice and probity. Indeed, we have before us weighty matters, bordering on ethics and rule of law, things that should be of utmost concern to any responsible senate, and no time would be most appropriate for Adolphus Wabara and his colleagues in the Upper House to demonstrate convincingly that they are by no means what Mr. El-Rufai had recently called them. It would be most damaging, both to their image and the health of the polity, for the senators to vindicate the suspicion that they are more interested in getting a pound of the haughty Mallam’s unduly summarized flesh to repair their bruised ego than dealing with the festering case of corruption and gross abuse of office so prominently advertised in this case.
Indeed, El-Rufai has elevated himself to a very insidious phenomenon in our polity, and the senators would be appointing themselves eager accomplices in this sickening monstrosity if they yield to any influences and condone his insufferable excesses.
I have viewed El-Rufai’s hasty projection in media circles as the holiest man in Nigeria with immense suspicion. It was clear that when El-Rufai without any iota of evidence accused two principal officers of the senate of demanding N54 million from him to facilitate the senate’s endorsement of his nomination as minister, his confidence had rested on a formidable media image which he was sure would dwarf out the feeble protestations of the accused persons, especially, as the duo belonged to a senate that practically stinks. No doubt, he had ensured he got the pipers dully paid. Little wonder then that the report of the Senate’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) contains the chilling submission that the “righteous” Mallam had squandered the sum of N192, 156,171.00 on publicity and public relations alone!
And because El-Rufai (or is it El-Ruffian) considers himself above the laws of the land, perhaps, because those laws were probably put in place by “fools”, he had in utter disdain for Due Process and Civil Service regulations hired two 1997 graduates as Special Assistants and single-handedly fixed outrageously jumbo salaries for them; and before the lucky duo could properly settle down to work, their salaries have already amounted to nearly N20 million! Now, El-Rufai had lied to the nation that these were special tokunbo species whose “sacrificial” return to help deliver a country of “fools” like Nigeria was facilitated by the World Bank which also was paying their salaries. But we have since been shown a World Bank’s letter stating unequivocally that El-Rufai’s two “experts” could not “meet the minimum relevant experience requirement as provided in the TORs” to be classified as such, and so, the World Bank had nothing to do with their employment and salaries. Does any thing here point you to some ulterior motive in the FCT Minister’s vigorous defense of the dollar-denominated salaries of two “super ministers”? And one of El-Rufai’s two special assistants who had unceasingly insisted she was a US citizen (despite the Mallam’s consistent contrary claims) did not also participate in the mandatory NYSC programme. And El-Rufai, the Emperor of Abuja, had personally signed the appointment letters of these tokunbo assistants in contravention of civil service rules. And all these were happening right under the nose of “Madam Due Process”, our friend, Oby Ezekwesili.
In December 2003, El-Rufai also made the following questionable payments to a certain M.S. Hamidu for “special services”: N5,488,500.00 (Dec.17), N 8,119,355.00 (Dec.22), N10,850,000.00 (the same day), and N4,788,160.00 (Dec.22).
Indeed, E-Rufai’s arrogant wallowing in the putrid pit of corruption induces nausea. As Director-General of Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE), El-Rufai could not account for N141 billion that had accrued to the nation through the controversial privatization programme. Quoting the belly-aching discovery of the senate committee, Daily Independent on Sunday, September 5, 2004, reported that under El-Rufai, the BPE “only remitted N45 billion to the CBN but withdrew N35 billion a week later, leaving a balance of N2.4 billion in the account.” Indeed, El-Rufai, characteristically, refused to sign the BPE 2002 audited accounts as required by law.
President Obasanjo has a responsibility to rid his cabinet of arrogant, clever hypocrites like El-Rufai. A number of commentators have already moved in to save him with colourless verbiage about his passion; intellect and dedication, the same way a section of the media have continually intimidated Obasanjo into believing that El-Rufai was indispensable. This is one reason why Nigeria has refused to make any advance: We always find reasons to shield our favorites from the just consequences of their misdeeds, and in the process embolden others to commit worse atrocities. Highly visible and garrulous fakes like El-Rufai, with sickening penchant for indiscriminately dropping the president’s name, should be used as public example, to demonstrate that corruption is not officially condoned in Nigeria. The senate would merely be endorsing El-Rufai’s description of them if they prove incapable of ensuring he keeps a date with the laws he has so flagrantly flouted.
I am not denying El-Rufai’s soulless zeal to clean up Abuja and beautify it with the blood of the poor and less-privileged for the comfort of the rich. Indeed, his likes have better talent for destruction than for building up. I had thought there should be a social, human, angle to these heartless demolitions and sacking of hawkers and traders, without providing them with alternatives, and not caring whether they died or lived? No decent government, except ones represented by ungodly, haughty, blackmailing whistle-blowers like El-Rufai, would implement its big dreams without due consideration to its citizenry, no matter how lowly placed. With a character like our class-conscious El-Rufai thumbing his nose at the not-so-lucky Nigerians, and wishing they were flung far away from his empire to some refuse dump site or any similar place, this administration has no better advertiser for its unparalleled heartlessness.
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