Interrogating El-Rufai’s leadership doctrine
My encounter on December 10, 2016 with Lucky Awobasivwe on the ‘National Leadership Question’ opened insights worth sharing. A successful business tycoon, Awobasivwe is an amazingly simple man. Guided by sound ethical principles, he has deep respect for people, processes, and rules. Though averse to the “undue complexities of politics”, he is nonetheless passionate about […]
My encounter on December 10, 2016 with Lucky Awobasivwe on the ‘National Leadership Question’ opened insights worth sharing. A successful business tycoon, Awobasivwe is an amazingly simple man. Guided by sound ethical principles, he has deep respect for people, processes, and rules. Though averse to the “undue complexities of politics”, he is nonetheless passionate about good governance as the “bedrock of societal orderliness and oxygen for good, sustainable businesses”. He is passionate about credible leaders and believes President Muhammadu Buhari has what is required to deal decisively with bad governance in Nigeria, especially corruption. Also, he is bullish on Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai – the Executive Governor of Kaduna State. On that day, Awobasivwe talked passionately about El-Rufai’s “unblemished leadership qualities, clear vision on the right direction for society and extraordinary courage to go against the status quo and make positive change possible.” But somehow he supplied no more than platitudes for so elevating El-Rufai, and for this I disagreed with him. In disagreeing, I was armed with two rebuttals on El-Rufai’s tenure as the Director-General (DG) of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). I had argued then, that: “Nasir must lose his claim to whistle-cleanliness, character balance, and thoroughness if media reports are right that, as DG of the BPE, he handed over NITEL to Pentascope – an easily ascertainable fraud on Nigeria as a nation. It is said that Pentascope was hastily registered in Holland on New Year Day in 2002 (a global Public Holiday!). It is a fact that Pentascope is not a registered company in Nigeria (with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)) and therefore lacked the legal capacity to do business in Nigeria, including managing NITEL. Pentascope’s workforce of just nine (9) persons, reasonably disqualified it from competing to manage a behemoth like NITEL with a staff strength of tens of thousands.
“Significantly, the BPE advertised that it was searching for an international telecoms operator with a record of accomplishment of installing and managing at least one million telephone lines. Pentascope had no such history of managing even one telephone line! Indeed, Pentascope failed all set criteria for companies competing to manage NITEL… Despite these and much more, the BPE still donated the management of NITEL to Pentascope and curiously declined to monitor implementation of the Pentascope agreement! … That apart, I also agree that the Mallam ought to be disrobed of respect if his BPE actually paid his ‘lucky’ female aide, Ms. Aishetu Fatima Kolo, about Two Million Naira as monthly pay (in US Dollars equivalent) in brazen violation of basic rules of transparency.
Thus, more was required to canonise El-Rufai as a reference for good leadership in the exalted order of Lee Kuan Yew, as Awobasivwe believes. But Awobasivwe was calm as I took down his perspectives. To him, my rebuttals were out of context and based on unhinged sponsored media reports. Questioning his confidence in the El-Rufai brand was a pain.
Given his unbreakable anti-corruption convictions, was it possible that the allegations were orchestrated to taint El-Rufai in bad light with a view to allowing corruption a smooth sail in the BPE? The answer is a straight ‘Yes’. In Kolo’s case, El-Rufai was targeted for refusing to ‘play ball’ with corrupt lawmakers who wanted to make the BPE their private ATM. And because they met an impenetrable barrier in El-Rufai’s granite will, they practically defunded the BPE with zero budgetary allocations – thinking this would compel his acquiescence. But ever unyielding to attacks on his values, El-Rufai called upon his ingenuity by resorting to international funding and donations for the BPE from USAID, DFID and the World Bank. In the case of USAID, the donations were administered by IBTCI – a USAID-appointed consultant. BPE was therefore not in direct control of what its “core team” consultants, including Kolo earned.
Undoubtedly, El-Rufai’s BPE successes convinced former President Olusegun Obasanjo to appoint him as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja with a mandate to restore the Abuja Masterplan which was then severely distorted. He knew it would take an El-Rufai to do it and mandated him accordingly. And El-Rufai delivered excellently. But his first hurdle came when he refused to pay an alleged bribe of N54 million for Senate clearance and went further to publicly name and shame those involved. By this, he announced himself as a ‘madman’ to be feared the more. Fearless, he took down a building belonging to Ahmadu Ali (Chairman of the then ruling party – PDP) because approval for the property was improper. He almost took Nigeria into a diplomatic row with France for rightly insisting that the French Embassy could not developed its ambassador’s residence on a plot of land reserved for a school on the masterplan. He prevailed. Not ready to spare even Nigeria itself for violating the masterplan, he demolished a property belonging the Federal Government as ‘illegal’. In the end, he restored the FCT Masterplan. That is leadership.
It is well-known that El-Rufai played a leading role in the 2015 general elections which saw the emergence of President Buhari and his emergence as governor. His decision to invest his leadership endowments at his home front is no doubt impacting Kaduna as a good governance model. He is already undertaking critical institutional reforms and attracting global players to Kaduna. His vision to make Kaduna the largest agriculture and agro-processing hub in West Africa deserves attention because El-Rufai will succeed. His intellectual and character strengths are delivering huge advantages for his people.
Duku wrote this piece from Lagos.