Even by his own garrulous standard, Nasir el-Rufai, former FCT minister, has surpassed every reasonable threshold of narcissistic self-adulation. When he is not doing a laughable rhetorical impersonation of Nuhu Ribadu, he is flattering himself with self-serving revisionist history, in which, of course, he is the hero and his former friend and now archenemy, Umaru Yar’adua, is the irredeemable villain.
When el-Rufai started off on the path of distancing himself from the badness of the previous administration and from the contrived disaster of the 2007 transition programme, perceptive Nigerians, especially in the online community, dismissed the adventure as a brief ego trip triggered by the psychological trauma of his sudden loss of power and influence. Many disingenuous and insulting essays later, el-Rufai has established a perverse political brand: self-reinvention through populist pandering.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
We all knew that Yar’adua’s election portended trouble for Nigeria; el-Rufai, the consummate insider that he claims to be, did not have a supernatural insight into the impending disaster. The signs were there for all to see. That he and those who packaged the former Katsina State governor for the presidency ignored these signs is a testament to the contempt with which they held the Nigerian people. So, el-Rufai did not see ahead of the political curve, ahead of Nigerians. He came around opportunistically to the ubiquitous wisdom of Yar’adua’s unsuitability for the presidency.
What will it take for el-Rufai to understand the depth of Nigerians’ anger at him for the active role he played in the political crimes and travesties of Nigeria’s recent political history? What will it take for him to come to terms with his own toxicity and divisiveness in Nigeria’s on-going political soul-searching? When will he grasp the insulting effects that his recent exercises in self-exoneration and populist posturing have on Nigerians who are reeling from the afflictions and deprivations of the Obasanjo-Yar’adua continuum?
el-Rufai’s chronic failure to wrap his mind around the cold reception accorded his new career of public criticism has resulted in yet another clichéd denunciation of his old friend, Umaru Yar’dua. His latest balm on a bruised ego is an essay titled Truth is Always Constant, which he published on popular Nigerian news and commentary website, Nigeriavillagesquare.com.
This is not the familiar stock essay of el-Rufai’s post-Obasanjo punditry. Of course, it does the familiar silly dance of self-righteousness and is sprinkled with copious amounts of el-Rufai’s brand of underhanded pandering. And it contains, for good measure, the usual Nuhu Ribadu, Oby Ezekwesili cameos. Both of them are staples of el-Rufai’s name-dropping technique, which he deploys in the hope of reaping associational capital from these people of relative, if debatable, integrity and competence. The current essay goes further though. In this piece, el-Rufai proclaims himself a political prophet for anticipating the current crisis of leadership in which Nigeria is mired. el-Rufai claims that current events in the governance and political arena have proven his prognosis right.
What is the point of reference for this arrogant proclamation? First, a little background. When the new power structure in Abuja turned its screws on the most visible personnel of the previous administration in a PDP family power feud, el-Rufai became a target of incumbent rage. His tenure, which is rich with legitimate fodder for allegations of illegality and corruption, attracted the vindictive searchlight of the Yar’adua faction. Cornered in his own self-created ethical and legal mess, el-Rufai, former fanatical campaigner for Yar’adua, former loyal PDP party man, and former aspirant to a ministerial position in the current administration, turned coat. He launched a war of self-preservation, electing to give as much as he was getting and to go on a preemptive offensive.
His first strike was a convoluted, repetitive, largely incoherent, and grammatically challenged essay he published on Nigeriavillagesquare.com and other Nigerian internet outlets. Titled: Umaru Yar’adua: Great Expectations, Disappointing Outcome, it inaugurated a steady stream of internet articles that have marked el-Rufai’s new career as a political “activist.” The essay was an impulsive, almost visceral reaction to his persecution by the new lords of Abuja. Because it was rooted in the petty political and personal disputes of Nigeria’s PDP oligarchy, it met with a largely indifferent and even hostile reception. el-Rufai’s new persona as an anti-Yar’adua, anti-establishment activist fooled very few, and his populist pretensions had little purchase with a notoriously but rightly cynical Nigerian online community.
In that essay, el-Rufai did “warn” Nigerians of Yar’adua’s congenital incompetence. But there were three major problems with this belated revelation and respondents took him up on them. el-Rufai was asked to explain why, knowing this to be Yar’adua’s true potential, he, by his own elaborate admission, and along with Obasanjo and Nuhu Ribadu, engineered the undemocratic plot to smuggle a reclusive, listless governor into Aso Rock. As el-Rufai struggled to articulate a coherent response, other respondents barged in with an even weightier poser: why did he wait with his insider insights until Yar’adua’s incompetence had become the stuff of popular humor and until he had become a target of the regime’s anxieties of insecurity and illegitimacy?
Finally, el-Rufai had to content with a small but stubborn wrinkle that threatened to unravel the essence and validity of his new tale of patriotic vigilance. Facts can make their stubborn little intrusions into cleverly conceived fables. One fact that continues to trouble el-Rufai’s invented claims to patriotic motivation in his current campaign is that in late 2006, when he and Nuhu Ribadu were interviewed together by Sam Omatseye, Ribadu proclaimed excitedly, to el-Rufai’s silent acquiescence, that the then FCT minister was the next energy minister, in Yar’adua’s impending administration, of course!
Much like he has done with every unpalatably factual piece of recent history that challenges the veracity of his twisted claims, el-Rufai has since disavowed this ambition, even though he neither claims that Ribadu was misquoted in the interview nor that his agreement with Ribadu’s confident prediction was mischaracterized. He has sought instead to de-link this revealing interview and his subsequent disappointment at being alienated from Yar’adua’s government from his current gripe.
In his latest essay, el-Rufai claims that Obasanjo is a target of Yar’adua’s marauding paranoia. Perhaps that is the case. But why should we care when the PDP behemoth, the most recognizable symbol of Nigeria’s political quagmire, is imploding and engaging in internal cleansing?
El-Rufai has claimed in recent media interviews that he is ready to work with anyone to unseat Yar’adua. Good. If he succeeds in this mission and the corruption charges against him are dropped by a friendly successor administration, then what? Does the departure of Yar’adua signal the redemption that Nigerians crave? Is Yar’adua the problem or is he merely the current symbolic incarnation of a larger institutional problem, in which el-Rufai is deeply implicated?
I have said this before but let me repeat it here: Nigerians have no dog in this internal power struggle between factions of the power elite, so el-Rufai should stop inviting us to take his faction’s side. Our role in the unfolding political theatre is that of interested and invested spectators. We are enjoying that role.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });