|
Former Minister of
the Federal Capital Territory, Mallam
Nasir El-rufai, has acknowledged it was
a huge mistake on his part to have
helped in the election of President
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua even as he said that
former President Olusegun Obasanjo only
accepted reforms out of necessity.
El-rufai also said the creation of the
new Niger Delta ministry is a “political
gesture” and unecessary bureaucracy that
will fail to solve the problems facing
the troubled region. Instead, he
advocated the deployment of the Niger
Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in
the implementation of an aggressive
development plan similar to that of
Abuja.
The former minister made these remarks
at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) in
Washington, D.C., while delivering a
speech titled “Nigeria: Political
Dynamics and Prospects for Reform.”
El-rufai moaned what he said was the
unwillingness of President Yar’adua to
accept the economic reform agenda when
he became president.
Asked if he does not partially bear a
responsibility for supporting the
president during the campaign, El-rufai
replied in the positive.
“I played a role to get him elected
because I thought he could run Nigeria.
He was not a bad guy, so we thought he
could do it and we worked to help him
get elected.
“After two years, I have reviewed
everything and think we made a mistake.
That does not mean we should not
acknowledge it. People made decisions
based on information then,” he
explained.
Although, President Obasanjo personally
selected Yar’adua, El-rufai says the
former governor enjoyed goodwill among
the power players because he performed
relatively well in his native Katsina
State.El-rufai accused the Yar’Adua
administration of paying lip service to
the fight against corruption, embarking
on what he described as a “disingenuous”
campaign against the oppositon and
dragging its feet on the approval of the
report of the Niger Delta Technical
Committee submitted in November 2008.
He argued that Obasanjo bought into the
reform agenda that proved highly
successful only because he was compeled
by circumstances to do so. To back his
argument, he stated that Obasanjo wanted
the write-off of the $30 billion Paris
Club debt he inherited as his economic
legacy, hence his willingness to toe the
line.He further explained that the EFCC
under the Obasanjo government was
established as a token step to satisfy
one of the requirements of the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF) to remove
Nigeria from the list of non-cooperating
countries in international financial
transactions.The agency thus “got a new
lease of life not with the establishment
of EFCC but the accidental appointment
of the passionate and committed Nuh
Ribadu as Chairman,” he claimed.
To butress his point,
El-rufai cited the case of the former
military President Abdulsalami Abubakar,
who he says also agreed to reform only
because there was need to engage with
multilateral agencies at the time when
oil priced collapsed to about $10 per
barrel in 1998.
“That situation of
near-bankruptcy of the Federal
Government enabled us to get the
Staff-Monitored Programme with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) signed
and the Privatisation Decree enacted in
record time by the military junta,” he
argued.
While not questioning
President Obasannjo’s love and genuine
intentions for the country, El-rufai
maintained that reform was not his goal
when elected in 1999. Obasanjo was
however “courageous” to accept the
reform agenda in the midst of competing
political interests by politicians
determined to sustain the status quo,
El-rufai explained.
Regarding the Niger
Delta Ministry, the former minister said
there is enough bureacuracy already and
creating a ministry was the wrong
approach to development challenges. He
suggested the NDDC should to operate
like the Federal Capital Development
Authority at the inception of Abuja.
The president could
appoint someone with a good reputation
and integrity as the CEO, preferably
from outside the region. It should be
run professionally to reduce the
political pressure from different states
and experts hired from various fields to
get the job done.
Giving an example on
why parastatals run more efficienctly
than ministries, El-rufai said he was
compelled to shut down the Ministry of
Abuja when he came into office because
it was not functional.
“Because the problems
of the Niger Delta require a regional
solution and not a state-based solution,
not distributing contracts, not buying
buses, that will not solve the problem.
You need to implement an infrastructure
development programme, an economic
strategy similar to what was designed
for Abuja,” he stated.
The former minister
stressed the importance of political and
electoral reforms. He admitted that one
of the mistakes of the economic team
during the Obasanjo government was their
failure to realise that politics “trumps
everything everyday.”
That mindset caused
the team, mostly technocrats, to avoid
getting deeply involved in the political
process, thereby suffering
marginalisation and the reversal of
policy directions, he claimed.
Nigeria requires what
he described as a revolutionary
political movement without violence in
order to progress, he noted.
Another speaker at
the event, Mr. Carl Le Van concurred
when he said that a domestic movement is
needed in the country. This movement,
accordign to Van could include former
politicans with genuine intentions and
expertise who are currently unemployed.
Politics at the state
level can also be strenghtened as a
buffer against weakness at the federal
level, he added.
El-rufai who recently
graduated with an MA in Public Policy
and Management from Havard University
Kennedy School of Government said
President Barack Obama chose to ignore
Nigeria and travel to Ghana in order to
support good governance in that country.
That move indicates
that Nigeria’s quality of governance has
deteriorated, he added. |
