El-Rufai, Nigerians and the right to misbehave

My respect and admiration for the former minister of the FCT Malam Nasir el-Rufai increased a million fold when he eventually gave testimony at the Senate committee probing the activities of the FCT on Wednesday the 30 th of April. The whole aim of the probe was to discredit, humiliate and disgrace him. But from my estimation he emerged from the hostile grilling walking ten feet taller. The senators wanted to virtually force him to apologise for an offence he was convinced he never committed. A person of lesser stuff would have easily capitulated to please the situation. He would have looked like a cornered jelly fish but the man was a study in confidence and composure, much, I am certain, to the disappointment of those who wanted him to be humiliated.

If he had apologised for some of the courageous but painful decisions he was compelled to take to sanitise Abuja, his traducers would have said “we told you so; this man is callous and insensitive. He acted the way he did because he was power-drunk”. By stoutly refusing to apologise for demolishing structures that were illegally erected in the FCT, el-Rufai is telling Nigerians that he is a man of his conviction who would not pander to sentiments or play politics to save his skin. He is saying also that one needs to be resolute if one knows that even though what one did hurt some people, one had no malicious intention in doing them. All you wanted was to do what was in the interest of the overall good of the people. That is self-confidence and integrity and not arrogance as those who hate el-Rufai’s guts would put it.

Nigerians tend to have the mistaken notion that human rights means the right to misbehave or for one to do as one pleases without regard for the law. Senator Smart Adeyemi raised this point and el-Rufai shut him up permanently. The law of social contract means that the citizen must respect government and the rules and regulation put in place for the general good of all. The government will in turn protect the citizen. A citizen who goes about disobeying government, building structures anywhere he likes without respect for town planning rules has no right to complain about the violation of his human rights when such illegal structures are demolished.

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As I said somewhere else recently, Nigerians seem to think that rights are a license to misbehave and that when they do wrong, the role of government is to kiss them on the cheeks and pat them on the back and say “God bless you”. That is not the role of government at all. The Bible in Romans chapter 13 verses 1- 5 defines government as an agency created to whip those who misbehave into line and to reward those who behave well. How do you pay compensation to those who disregarded the rule of government by building structures illegally? Does government exist to reward misbehaviour?

Any responsible government which was confronted with the slum that Abuja had grown into before el-Rufai came in 2003 had no option but to appear insensitive to people’s plight by taking some tough actions that visited pains on people but which were the correct thing to do. You can not make an omelet without breaking an egg. Those who said yes we have a clean and beautiful Abuja but el-Rufai demolished the structures of the poor, are being dishonest. Abuja is clean today because some houses had to be pulled down. If el-Rufai had chosen to be ‘kind’ to the so-called poor some dishonest people are talking about, Abuja would have become a proper slum dwelling today.

At any rate, good leadership does not mean that you condone the illegal acts of people just because they are poor or rich. Some things have to be done for the interest of all.

What the senators are doing is not leadership at all. Their goal is to find fault and portray themselves as people concerned for the common man. Some of us can see very clearly that they are never in the least motivated by patriotism. They are pursuing selfish interests in the name of righting wrongs.

How many of those senators who sat in judgment over el-Rufai have the vision, the sense of organisation and the courage to do even one tenth of the things he did in four years as minister of the FCT? From the mean questions they were asking el-Rufai one could do a character portrait of each of them. They are the kind of persons who if they were given the opportunity to pilot the affairs of the FCT, would spend weeks and months and years complaining about the rot in the place, the indiscipline and disobedient nature of Nigerians and the gargantuan problems confronting them and would do nothing about the situation until their tenure ends.

It is very easy to sit in judgment over others. It is quite a different kettle of fish to actually solve real life problems involving millions of people with diverse and divergent interests.

How many of the senators who were playacting as the conscience of the nation have even one tenth of the sense of integrity that el-Rufai has? I am sure that if any of them were to allocate the 27,000 plots that el-Rufai allocated to Nigerians across the country, some of them would give a hundred to themselves and their friends and family members. Some Nigerians who are not gullible are saying that the whole idea of the senate probe is motivated by those who felt they did not get plots or those who lost money due to demolition of their illegal structures. The elites are fighting el-Rufai also because he was and is still close to former President Obasanjo whom many love to hate. If after May 29, 2007 el-Rufai had started denouncing Obasanjo the way some former Obasanjo loyalists are disgracefully doing now the inquisition against him now would not have taken place at all.

My position has always been that if we were a serious minded people, the performance of el-Rufai when he faced that barrage of attacks from the senators would have convinced us that this is the kind of man we need to pilot the affairs of this country. He showed organisation, composure, even guile. He knew the senators were out for him and he never fell into their trap. He guided his tongue with diligence and gave no testimony that implicated himself or anybody else. He showed his legendary intelligence.

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He kept addressing the vain Senators “sir”, “sir” not necessarily out of courtesy but mainly to massage their fragile ego and vanity and pettiness. When they baited him in order to nail him, he knew where they were going an hour earlier. When they sought to gag him when he wanted to give background to some of the actions he was forced to take, they would not let him but he still kept his cool. In a word, el-Rufai was a study in the kind of person we need as president of this country but which our foolishness has not allowed us to have. Just see the way he organised his defence. He went to the panel fully prepared with documents on the issues he knew would come up. His grasp of issues he dealt with even five years ago when he was minister shows very clearly the sharp retentive memory which God has given to him and which he has taken the pains to cultivate.

If Nigerians do not have the sense of gratitude and fairness to thank Obasanjo and el-Rufai for restoring Abuja to the dream of its founding fathers, the least they should do is to stop harassing them. In the course of serving the nation, the duo no doubt made mistakes. But who is above mistakes?

As a Nigerian I am thoroughly disgusted by the TV show going on in Abuja in the name of el-Rufai probe. It is an opportunity for idle senators to play to the gallery. At the end of this live show nothing tangible will come out of it. Let someone contradict me. We have seen this type of show before.

By Idang Alibi

Idang Alibi is an Abuja-based journalist.