This case called El-Rufai

A
las. We now know that, unless some drastic change happens, former head of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, will not be a minister in the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu after all, at least not at any time soon.

Perhaps, he may never be a minister or anything of consequence again in Nigeria. Perhaps, this is the beginning of the end for the “accidental public servant” in Nigerian politics and government. Or perhaps nothing of consequence has happened, and that “Malam” will soon bounce back again as he has always done.

Whichever the case, El-Rufai’s non-confirmation by the Senate and the events surrounding it present a long-time but distant observer an opportunity to untangle one of the most animating political careers in Nigeria since 1999. But first, let us clear the air on the reported events of the past few days involving El-Rufai, the Senate and President Tinubu himself.

Let us face it, El-Rufai did not “withdraw his interest” to become a minister in Tinubu’s government. No one goes that far into a ministerial nomination process only for them to withdraw without sensing danger. My guess is that El-Rufai withdrew from the nomination process not only because it was the last choice available for him, but also because he sensed that something politically damaging was in the offing against him, and that the best way to avert it was to say he was withdrawing his interest. It was, I think, the classic damage control.

According to exclusive reporting of it by Premium Times, El-Rufai said he was withdrawing interest only after meeting with President Tinubu at the Villa, and only after Tinubu asked El-Rufai to give him 24 hours to sort out the purported “petitions” against the former Kaduna governor. Quick witted as he is, El-Rufai must have sensed immediately that the real hurdle between himself and a ministerial post, was alas, no one else than Tinubu himself; certainly not the Senate or the antics of some faceless petitioners. If Tinubu genuinely wanted to work with him, then the president doesn’t need 24 hours to address any petitions.

In the end, the damage control was effective because we now don’t know for sure why the man withdrew from the process. But some damage was done nevertheless. El-Rufai’s non-confirmation by the Senate was still nothing other than a public humiliation for him. There is absolutely no removing a sense of “used and dumped”, in a political manner of speaking, from this. As a ministerial nominee, Malam Nasir El-Rufai is not in the same league as the other two nominees whose confirmation was also denied. Indeed, any student of power politics could easily say that the other two nominees were added to the list of non-confirmed precisely in order not to make El-Rufai’s too obvious.

So, for me, all the talk about some reported “gang-up” and “power play” by some unnamed persons to deny the former FCT minister a slot in Tinubu’s cabinet is not more than an attempt to give a positive spin to a very bad situation for the man. My own guess is that Tinubu, or someone who has his confidence, really wanted to damage El-Rufai politically beyond repair, to humiliate him publicly on the national stage, and so badly as to snuff out his political life out of him completely, even if it is difficult to tell, from my distance, what their motivations might be.

Either way, El-Rufai himself should have no reason to be surprised. He has been at the political game long enough to realise that few things in politics are more effective than a well-timed betrayal by those close enough to do it. After all, it is not too long ago that El-Rufai himself publicly read from a draft strategy paper on how to effectively “retire” Tinubu from Lagos politics, and by implication, all politics altogether, as he, El-Rufai, had said, he retired similar old-timers in his own domain of Kaduna.

Still, the most significant thing about El-Rufai’s non-confirmation by the Senate is that it will likely take him back to that familiar place in his career that he dreads the most: being out of the closed loop of power in Nigerian government and politics. By first handing out a ministerial nomination to El-Rufai, and then publicly, and humiliatingly, withdrawing it, Tinubu is declaring that he has not much use for him in his cabinet or anywhere else in his new government. Otherwise, the non-confirmation would have come immediately with a nomination for something else that does not require Senate approval.

So, for our outsider analyst, the question is what would the current state of EL-Rufai as a “private citizen” to use his own words, but more clearly as El-Rufai without power portend for both Tinubu and the man? El-Rufai simply can’t stand outside of power, nor can he sit on the margins of it. This is precisely what took him to battle against perceived enemies and on behalf of new, often previously estranged, political principals between 2007 and 2015.

Having played a key role in the emergence of late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua in 2007, El-Rufai naturally expected to remain influential in the new government. Yar’Adua called that bluff with a wave of the hand, and to date, he speaks and writes about the late president with the most rabid sense of grief and ill-will imaginable, if not hatred altogether. And according to the journalist Olusegun Adeniyi’s Power, Politics and Death, El-Rufai was one of the key figures behind the influence campaign that turned the whole nation against Yar’Adua at a crucial moment, and thus, smoothened the path for the so-called Doctrine of Necessity that effectively removed Yar’Adua from power long before he would breathe his last.

But as men in bowler hats began arriving Abuja in droves, El-Rufai would not find much space in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s government either, and the potential principal soon turned political enemy Number One. He soon ported to Buhari’s camp, and over the next four years, neither President Jonathan, nor his party the PDP, knew much sleep, even if, other factors, some largely self-inflicted, contributed to their ultimate downfall at the hands of the opposition APC in 2015. The rest, as they don’t always say, is history still present.

Malam Nasir El-Rufai is clearly one of Nigeria’s most consummate politicians, in both the Platonic and Machiavellian senses of the term. Can President Tinubu afford to have El-Rufai outside pissing in as he had done to late President Yar’Adua and former Jonathan before? Would Tinubu rather not be better off with El-Rufai in his government where he can keep a closer eye on him than have him join up with any other potential principal again? Most importantly, however, would El-Rufai himself stop the perennial and ultimately unsatisfying search for political principals to serve, instead of going for the top job as his own man?