Nasir El-Rufai: Big Things Come In Small Sizes

Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State, who is now making the ward rounds of the security agencies on one charge after another, is an enigma.

Three years ago he was damning moons and stars in his support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate for the 2023 presidential elections. In doing this he galvanised northern APC governors to vigorously support the idea such that he declared that there were no more elders or people of note in the north to whom he could defer.

El-Rufai took even the unprecedented step of ‘’poking fingers’’ in the eyes of late President Muhammadu Buhari, who he thought was not being robust enough in supporting Tinubu’s bid. At the height of the naira currency reform exercise embarked upon by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emiefele, which many saw as an attempt to squeeze out the projected deluge of cash to run Bola Tinubu’s presidential campaign he took the matter to court in order to have Emiefele’s naira reforms suspended. When President Tinubu travelled to Britain to address the Chatham House, El-Rufai went along as a prominent member of the delegation and indeed, Tinubu felt confident enough in El-Rufai to appoint him to field questions from the audience.

Now as the chummy relationship between EL-Rufai and President Tinubu has run full circle with the former Kaduna governor biting the dust, a lively industry of comments has sprouted in the public space about the man Nasir El-Rufai.

In his circle of friends and others, El-Rufai is called ‘’Giant’’. If you are puzzled that he is called by that name when his diminutive frame clearly belies that, then you probably need an education on why he is so called.

‘’Giant’’ as he is called is not obviously reference to El-Rufai’s height challenged frame or lack of a robust body mass. It is an inverse recognition of El-Rufai’s academic brilliance, his tenacious fighting spirit, his abrasive character and his disposition to getting things done with or without scruples. He was the best graduating student in his class at the famous Barewa College, Zaria and made straight A’s in the Quantity Surveying department at the Ahmadu Bello University. And when he went on to private business upon graduation this same level of brilliance and tenacity shown through in his ability to raise a business from scratch to growing it into something solid and successful.

If you put all these known attributes of El-Rufai together adding others in the process, you will realise that while he may not truly be such a hulking figure to merit the name, by his undoubted achievements for a man of such frame El-Rufai deserves being called ‘’Giant’’, albeit with a tinge of ironic sarcasm.

So, on the current matter of his running spat with the Tinubu administration necessitating his being hauled and run from one security agency to another, the question to ask is; is El-Rufai being sinned against than sinning?

There are people who would prefer that El-Rufai be kept in the slammer for as long as it takes so that ‘’we can hear word”. The Tinubu administration officials against whom El-Rufai has been brutally scathing in his remarks on them and who consider him as an irritating ‘’pipsqueak’’ are certainly in this category. His constant baiting of administration from President Tinubu on down, delivered with acerbic wit and the impact of a mule kick is clearly unsettling.

There are those who though sympathetic to his travails in the hand of the Tinubu administration would hope at best that El-Rufai somehow gets out of his trying period. But they will not as much as lift a finger to lift him out even if they could do so. To them by supporting Tinubu the way he did full stretch against all entreaties to be cautious, El-Rufai brought his current trials on himself and so as he made his bed, he must be prepared to lie on it.

To yet another set of people, El-Rufai is a bruiser with an unrestrained mouth. They point out the fact that he had fallen apart with virtually all who had helped him climb the ladder of progress in life. The valuable lesson learnt here is that El-Rufai is ruthlessly ambitious and driven by ego which leads him to seek to drown those that helped him in life. They point out that El-Rufai’s present railing against the Tinubu administration is a case of sour grapes because he was denied a promised appointment as minister in the Tinubu cabinet. Had he been given an appointment, he would have been defending the very government he now criticizes.

That El-Rufai is an enigma based on his public profile, comes as no surprise. We should not forget that in his public career, he comes out as a pugnacious enforcer, whose track record in implementation often contradicts the principles he tends to espouse. At the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) there are allegations that he employed persons in positions above their ken without regard to due process and paid them salaries way above their pay grade.

As Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, although he won praises for restoring the master plan of Abuja and took concrete steps to bring out its beauty, some of the demolitions of properties he undertook were done with ruthless abandon often leaving the victims without any time, options and alternatives.

In Kaduna where he held sway as governor, El-Rufai replicated similar things too. His run in with teachers and civil servants in the employ of government and those whose properties he demolished to make way for urban renewal in Kaduna left a sour taste in the mouth even though he got praises for infrastructural renewal of the city and in pruning down the bloated nature of government. Still in Kaduna, there is a lingering debate about his handling of the Southern Kaduna question in which he is accused of marginalising in appointments. As the enigma he is, El-Rufai evokes almost equal amounts of loathing and admiration. Those who loathe him point to his bloody mindedness and proclivity to care less about those that stand in his way in delivering the tasks he sets out or set out for him. On the other hand, those who admire him point to his brilliance in identifying a task, understanding it and mapping out a plan to achieving it.

As a prominent opposition figure El-Rufai is certainly proving a thorn in the side of the ruling party. He is someone whom the opposition will rely on for the hard ball and bare as knuckles scrap that they will hope to deploy in the coming months as the political momentum revs up. The opposition will also come to value his strategic nous and tactical brilliance in putting up a plan of action to see off President Tinubu and the ruling APC as El-Rufai continues to say with cast iron confidence.

As the months roll on, Nigerians wait to see how this ‘’Giant’’ of a man plays his card in the political stakes. But what is clear though is that from what we know of him, it will amount to a mistake to underestimate Nasir El-Rufai. For all it is worth he is the true epitome of the saying; ‘’Big things come in small sizes’’.

•Written By Iliyasu Gadu