BY NASIR EL-RUFAI.
Long before the publication of
The Accidental Public Servant, I had decided to resist joining issues with
whatever commentators wrote in response to the book by way of either attacking
the author or its contents. It is a narrative of my experiences and views, and I would simply invite others to document
theirs. Many of those that commented on, or ‘reviewed’ the book had not even
read it in full.
Others had decided long before it
was published that they would attack El-Rufai and whatever he writes, while a
few others were simply going to be unhappy with how they were presented in the
book as being less than perfect. When one writes a 700-page book, one has to
take a deep breath and allow others the slack to write a few pages in response,
however disagreeable or abusive.
When I wrote The Accidental
Public Servant, there were no illusions that its account would be uncontested.
As I have said repeatedly, it is simply my account of the people and events
that defined my years in public service. I took several precautions (such as
double-checking from the copious notes and diaries of events that were taken
after every major encounter – about forty seven note books in total) of
ensuring that it is a truthful, balanced and fair account of my experience.
I do not have a professorial
memory, so kept daily journals of events including verbatim records of
statements. I am delighted that I took the time to write it, and I once again
encourage others who have been privileged to be in the public service to
similarly record their experiences. Those who may choose not to write books can
still contribute by responding to specific issues mentioned in my narrative on
which they may have other information, however critical or contrary to my
account.
Professor Charles (I have always
called him Charles because that is how we were introduced. I have never gotten
used to calling him Chukwuma) Soludo approached me at the end of the recent
thanksgiving service for my sister, Oby Ezekwesili, to complain about some of
the assertions in my book concerning him. He denied that he owed his consulting
jobs with the World Bank and other institutions to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. He
denied being mentored or taught by her father. He added that he had not read
the entire book but would send me two pages of his initial observations. I
encouraged him not only to do so, but publish it and work on a book documenting
his experiences. Knowing Charles as I do, I had no doubt that he was already
doing that and the first episode has now been published in his fortnightly
column in Thisday.
Thus, his rebuttal did not come
as a surprise; given that I encouraged
him to do so as I have nothing to hide. Even so, it is shocking that he chose
to sensationalise his version of events by describing The Accidental Public
Servant as intellectual fraud. There is a question mark in the title of his
article, but the last sentence of Charles’ diatribe restated his magisterial
conclusion. He went further to provide his own definitions of fraud as “an
intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual”
or “as course of deception, an intentional concealment, omission or perversion
of truth”; only to stop there! Fraud has a technical and legal definition and
if Charles had bothered to consult his lawyer, he would have gone beyond the
‘online definition’, but that is another matter for now.
It is illogical to contest
someone’s CV with him in the absence of contrary and superior information. I
therefore concede to Charles’ account of his professional odyssey prior to his
being introduced to us in 2000 by Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, long before joining the
Obasanjo government in 2003. The logical question therefore is how any of the
examples he gave of the errors in his resume would without more, rise to the
level of fraud? Why would I intentionally deceive the world that Soludo’s
tenure as governor of CBN started in mid-2005 rather than May of 2004? This
only occurred when one of the book’s editors thought the 2004 date was wrong
and ‘corrected’ it but that escaped subsequent editorial reviews. What is the
personal gain to me in describing Soludo as a protégé of Professor Okonjo or
how did the description damage him when he just referred to the same Professor
Okonjo as “respected”? So, Charles needs to substantiate how any assertion,
error or omission in the book amounts to “fraud” per his definition.
After that, I do not see much
that is significant to warrant a clarification from me. One friend on Twitter
observed that Charles’ polemic had so much anger and little substance that he
truly sounded as angry as a woman scorned!
Much of Charles’ response is enlivened by innuendos. He repeats the
frequent charge about my ambition for the presidency in 2007, a charge that is
untrue but that is often echoed as if that ambition, if it existed, is akin to
treason. Charles knows that I do not consider illegitimate his desire to be
governor of his state or his current hopes to be a presidential running-mate.
But he should know better than most that ambition for office is not the only
reason for being active in politics. Since Charles has claimed that I ‘schemed desperately’
to succeed Obasanjo, he should please tell all – inform Nigerians what I did,
who was involved and spill the beans! Virtually all the narratives in The
Accidental Public Servant about Charles involved others that are still alive,
and if he said I made them up, perhaps he should state his version and invite
others mentioned to invalidate my claim instead of calling anyone a liar just
because he did not like the way his conduct appeared in the book.
Charles was introduced to me by
Ngozi, and that was the foundation of our professional relationship and
friendship. As far as I know, it was also Ngozi who proposed his name for
economic adviser and Oby (and her husband) took him to Obasanjo several times
before he was appointed. If Charles is denying that this happened, that is
fine. It does not change the facts, and those that did what they did know what
they did or did not do! Why is Charles so hurt that others have helped
him? Is he suggesting that he had won the
Nobel Prize in Economics and that is how Obasanjo got to meet and appoint him?
Charles presented his jaundiced
interpretations of what I wrote in clear language as my views in his piece. For
instance, there was nowhere in the book that I wrote that ‘Ngozi was power
hungry.’ She was pragmatic and realistic about power relations. How does that
equate to being power hungry? Charles is playing with words in a patently
dishonest way, knowing that many that will read his piece have not read the
book, but he is not the intellectual fraud! Charles also asserted that I forced
myself on the economic team and “destroyed it”! Was it El-Rufai that composed
the membership of the team? When and how was the team single-handedly destroyed
by me? As far as I know, warts and all, the economic team kept on working till
May 29, 2007. Again, I invite Charles to educate us all now, bearing in mind
virtually all the team members are still alive and around, even after he
stopped attending its weekly meetings.
In the book, I wrote that Charles
did many things to ingratiate himself to Obasanjo, one of which was to
attribute every good ‘idea’ to the latter; not actual achievements, since there
were few in the early days. Charles’ response was to misrepresent what was
written, just as he knows that there is no weight to the claim that appointees
under a presidential system cannot claim credit for their work. To acknowledge
the opportunity President Obasanjo gave me to serve, and the support he
provided to help us succeed at the FCT is very different from pretending that only
the boss had any ideas on how to administer Abuja, or that he oozed perfection,
presidential system or not.
Charles also came out guns
blazing questioning my narratives of events involving his new mentor Atiku
Abubakar, and Nuhu Ribadu and Obasanjo. In Charles’ views, these three people
made me tick in government and I should be eternally grateful. Charles has not
read the book. If he did, he would have come across all the instances in which
I gave each of them credit for what they did right and how they contributed to
the work I did. Unlike Charles who makes people believe they are perfect when
he needs them, I was consistent in and out of office in pointing to those I
worked with where I believe they went wrong Just as I was self critical of my
own shortcomings. In Charles’ vocabulary, that is ingratitude. In mine, it is
simply utilitarian sycophancy to attribute perfection to imperfect mortals
because they are likely to help one’s career next week!
Charles claimed that I pleaded
with him to provide technical assistance to BPE. That is false. That
conversation just never happened. Those familiar with BPE know that we hired
people either as regular public servants, individual consultants called ‘core
team’ members that work full time in the organization or investment bankers and
consulting firms like lawyers and accountants that provided periodic
transactional services as needed. Charles and his economic consulting firm did
not fit into any of the three categories.
I appointed him to the membership
of two reform steering committees – Competition and Anti-Trust and the Industry
and Manufacturing Reform Committees along with persons of the calibre of Pat
Utomi, Oby Ezekwesili, and Aliko Dangote. I was the coordinator of both
committees as DG of the BPE, with Ibrahim S. Njiddah, now a presidential
assistant doing the day-to-day management. I am now learning from the Charles’
piece that he single-handedly did the work of the Competition Reform Committee
for free. I did not realize that all the other notable members did nothing!
Well, thanks Charles, but Steering Committee members got hotel accommodation
and were paid sitting allowances by the BPE, so I do not quite understand what
was meant by asserting that you did the work free of charge.
That leaves us with asking
Charles to detail the fraud he alleges was attendant to the efforts we made to
restore the Abuja master plan. He claimed that my ‘vindictiveness’ nearly
ruined the exercise. Really? There is need to say more right on this away. I am
challenging Charles to substantiate these innuendos with names and details of
my alleged vindictiveness in his article since everybody knows that my service
at the FCT is a matter of public record that has been investigated by several
institutions unsympathetic to me, and all Abuja residents know about and still
comment upon it.
The rest of Soludo’s article was
spent blowing his trumpet of banking consolidation with his characteristic
modesty! The dismissal of Charles’ over-hyped banking consolidation in The
Accidental Public Servant therefore appeared to upset him more than anything
else. He is still under the illusion that his ‘revolution’ changed our lives
the way GSM licensing did! No one needs a single 234Next to see through the
hype and the disingenuous comparison. Banks like First Bank, UBA, Union, Zenith
IBTC, and GTB needed no consolidation. They had sound business models and were
doing well without it.
Soludo’s consolidation abolished
investment banks and regional banks, while creating a few ‘big’ banks with funny
names many of which were either comatose by 2009 or had to be subsequently
saved by the Sanusi Lamido Sanusi rescue exercise. It is pathetic to measure
the success of consolidation by the number of banks in the top 1,000 banks in
the world. Did that ranking translate into increased lending to the real
sector, greater employment opportunities for our people and intensified
mobilization of savings in the way the GSM revolution did? No way, only massive
margin loans to create a stock market bubble, engender insider lending and
incestuous relations between regulators and operators in the industry.
The kind of targeted
interventions needed to fill the gaps sustained by some of such policies were
opposed by Soludo unless the ideas originated from him. As CBN governor,
Charles did all he could to frustrate the attempts to establish a national
mortgage system and was openly critical of Ngozi’s drive and contributions in
getting the Paris Club debts written off for the simple reason that the the
credit might go to others not Soludo!
Charles is free to beat his chest
and claim that the deformed baby called consolidation was a revolution, but
today many of the the poster-children of the policy like Intercontinental,
Oceanic, Finbank and Spring Bank are history, the banking-stockbroking rock
stars are facing prosecution, and with N4 trillion spent to prevent the
collapse of his revolution.
When Charles’ memoirs are
published, those that either witnessed it or had to clean up ‘the world’s
fastest growing financial system’ will have their own views. And it will be
good for the country. After all, it has been said that every story has at least
three sides, my version, your version and the truth which lies somewhere in
between the two. If one refers to a book one finds disagreeable as intellectual
fraud while insisting that a cancer one created that has cost nearly the annual
budget of the federal government to treat, so far, as a resounding success,
then what more is there to say? It simply points to the moral and psychological
mind-set of such a person.
