By Wole Olujobi
“Let me have men about me that are fat,sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.”Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous….
“I do not know the man I should avoid so soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much, he is a great observer, and he looks quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays, as thou dost, Antony; he hears no music; seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort as if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit that could be moved to smile at any thing.”Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves, and therefore are they very dangerous.”
That is the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar’s scorecard for Roman nobleman Caius Cassius who led other Roman Senators during the time revolt against Caesar was reaching its peak to brutally assassinate him at the Capitol, ending both his reign and life as he fell bleeding onto the Senate floor at the feet of the statue of Pompey. Envious! Ambitious! Dangerous!
That is Caesar’s descriptive and thematic ambience of the conflict between public appearance and private reality of Cassius as a Roman nobleman, which coincides with former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s portraiture of petit (lean) Malam Nasir El-Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna State, in the Nigeria’s shark-infested political waters where “the near in blood, the nearer (is) bloody”.
Obasanjo, El-Rufai’s former boss, was he who first drew our attention to the ills that ail the former governor’s public life, describing the former minister of the FCT in the following words: “Nasir’s penchant for reputation savaging is almost pathological. Why does he do it? Very early in my interaction with him, I appreciated his talent. At the same time, I recognised his weaknesses; the worst being his inability to be loyal to anybody or any issue consistently for long.
“He lied brazenly, which he did to me, against his colleagues and so-called friends. My vivid recollection of him is penchant for lying, for unfair embellishment of stories, and his inability to sustain loyalty for long… with little or no regard for integrity.”
Obasanjo had earlier accused El-Rufai of three problems: the first is being too clever; second is being too clever; and third is being too clever.
Unfortunately, it was not only Obasanjo that had seen through this facade of patriotism in El-rufai that is rooted in clever ways of doing things to allegedly undermine his boss in order to have his way. This much the DSS declared in its security report on El-Rufai. In what appears to be a political profiling, the DSS accused the former governor of backstabbing his former bosses.
The agency said: “El-Rufai backstabbed former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Vice President Atiku Abubakar (who is said to have brought him into the Obasanjo administration), and the immediate-past President Muhammadu Buhari.”
Apart from DSS, El-Rufai had had a brush with the EFCC in its investigation on the contracts awarded between 2015 and 2023 under his leadership in Kaduna State, alleging that most of the loans obtained by the El-Rufai administration within the eight years were not utilised for the purposes for which they were secured, with the DSS also citing his “anti-people policies” that allegedly destroyed people’s livelihoods and market demolitions without compensation or alternatives, including the sacking of thousands of civil servants and removal of traditional rulers without due process.
The report further explained: “During the Senate confirmation process, the National Assembly requested security clearance from both national and international security and intelligence agencies, and it was discovered that Nasir el-Rufai failed his security screening woefully.
“He was considered a diplomatic liability to Nigeria because, on Thursday, February 7, 2019, Malam Nasir el-Rufai threatened European Union observers if they intervened in Nigeria’s impending Presidential elections, which were to take place on Saturday, February 16, 2019.
“On that day, Mr. el-Rufai said: ‘We are waiting for the person who will come and intervene. They will go back in body bags because nobody will come to Nigeria and tell us how to run our country.'”
The report added: “So strongly did the European Union view this threat that they wrote officially to the Government of Nigeria to protest and issued a public statement censuring Nigeria.
“Nasir el-Rufai’s government was indicted in the Zaria Shiite Massacre of Saturday, December 12, 2015, where 438 Shiite men, women, children and infants were slaughtered in one of Africa’s worst human rights violations.”
In what is clearly a breach of trust and paying evil for good, el-Rufai’s government was specifically cited for allegedly demolishing the homes of his political opponents in Kaduna, a clear act of betrayal of the people who he swore to protect their livelihoods while canvassing for their votes.
Again, apart from priming himself worse than a spitting cobra, El-Rufai, even though in SDP, maliciously became a joint spokesman for the triumvirate of Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rotimi Amaechi in the struggle for ADC’s presidential ticket, recklessly, in an act of indiscretion, falsely discrediting Tinubu and squealing for the men that he will later characterically rebel against, in his pathological rebellion against whoever holds higher position than himself in an act of betrayal.
In sync with Caesar’s characterisation of Cassius, El-Rufai, evidently self-propelled to be a rebel, and the most bitter of the co-rebels over ministerial bid that ended in fiasco, went to town in confirmation of Obasanjo’s accusation against El-Rufai for having a pathological penchant for lying, unfair embellishment of stories, and inability to sustain loyalty for long.
He started spewing false claims to discredit President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who he had earlier promoted across the globe, including painting gory and scary pictures of the security and economic health of the nation to scare the much-needed international investments to grow the nation at the time President Tinubu’s economic reforms are yielding positive results, so much so that both the World Bank and IMF had hailed the nation’s economic health as unprecedented in recent years.
El-Rufai, who had almost 20 years in marathon runs in government positions of high authority, and whose entire life is denominated in anger and morbid sense of entitlement, is today the supervisory spokesman for the Association of Displaced Complainants (ADC); the latest political contraption in Nigeria, which now serves as a refugee camp for disoriented politicians that lack focus and ideological strength to push any viable agenda for development.
At best, it is a post-protest platform for displaced, disgruntled, desperate and discharged (DDDD politicians) who, out of 2027 poll jitters, are clinging to any straw in the midst of wild storms threatening their political lives.Such a conglomeration of “trial and error” gamblers of diverse backgrounds in moral and ideological orientations is dangerous for any vision to grow a nation.
As Obasanjo hinted on former minister’s alleged penchant for lying and his inability to sustain loyalty for long, El-Rufai ‘s rebellious Binam wood moved to the Dunsinane of ambition, as the former governor declared gleefully, boasting on a live television programme to the shock and chagrin of the nation that he, in cahoots with other cohorts, wiretapped the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, allegedly giving orders to arrest him; a clear criminal conduct that attracts a jail term, particularly at the time such a criminal conduct is believed to be the strength of the Boko Haram and bandits in their sabotage operations to put the nation’s security and economy at risk.
So far, the ambush has failed as El-Rufai faces the law, even as President Tinubu consolidates grounds to take Nigeria, the Goshen of Africa, out of the suffocating economic woods planted by PDP’s ruinous years in power during which El-Rufai was a principal participant in a privatisation scheme led by Abubakar Atiku that sold Nigerian patrimony to cronies at half-pence.
The questions are: If relevant authorities could confirm El-Rufai to be a national security risk and too dangerously clever and regarded as international target over his reckless indiscretions over human rights abuses and international conventions, including felony against the state and domestic violence and rebellion against his people and with records allegedly declaring him as a pathological liar with uncanny capacity to undermine and backstab his benefactors, and he is everyday conducting himself in a manner not consistent with a man of noble heart, who is that Jesus Christ that is so rude to trust another Judas Iscariot?
Or who is that liberal Islamic cleric that is so base that will accommodate the tribe of Banu Qurayza who violated their peace treaty with Prophet Muhammad by conspiring with enemies during the Battle of the Trench (Ahzab)? Or the hypocrites (Munafiqun) (Surah At-Tawbah 9:77), who broke their promises to Allah and engaged in lying? Can President Bola Ahmed Tinubu therefore be faulted in his rejection of El-Rufai as a minister in his cabinet?
Who will appoint a diplomatic liability, security risk, malice merchant and notorious rights abuser a minister? Who will risk another Abacha/Babangida at garrison command to dine with General Muhammadu Buhari in the seat of power?
That El-Rufai braved the odds in confrontation with the North to fight for the emergence of Tinubu as APC’s candidate and eventual winner of the 2023 presidential poll, I sympathise with the former governor after failing to make Tinubu’s cabinet. That he is ambitious, like soldiers, I grant that ambition is a politician’s debt.
But that as he is maliciously dangerous as the records have proven that his quixotic risks are sauce for Cassius syndrome that has now cooked troubles for him, I plead that the former governor be left to the law to have a day with the consequences of his indiscretion as the law prepares for him the banquet of recompense in his rebellion-driven antics.
For sure, Nigeria can no longer be handed to the locusts after President Tinubu has proven that he is capable of turning Nigeria from the desert of lack and land of hunger to the oasis of development.
As Cassius ate from his own rebellious pot and drank from his cup of ambition, the law should allow El-Rufai to eat the dinner that rebellion has cooked for him in the kitchen of indiscretion.
Olujobi, journalist and former Deputy Director of Media and Publicity, 2023 Ekiti State APC Presidential Campaign Committee, writes from Ado-Ekiti
