El-Rufai and National Economic Team
By Steve Uwaoma
Eziuche Ubani, bold, brilliant and persuasive, was, in keeping with tradition, engaging on Friday, September 10 when he turned the searchlight on the frosty relations between the Senate and the Federal Capital Territory Minister Nasir el Rufai. Ubani�s piece, �el Rufai's Rite of Passage" arose principally from the apology to the federal legislature by the minister following his public utterance to the effect that silence was the best answer to a Senate committee indictment of him in respect of his employment and payment of two young but bright aides. el Rufai's statement has been interpreted in many quarters as amounting to an equation of all 108 senators with fools.
Ubani's column, together with the brilliant essay on the same matter by Reverend Father Mattew Hassan Kukah, remains the most informed article on the Senate and el Rufai altercation which must logically be traced to the accusation by the minister that two well known senators, Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu and Deputy Senate Majority Leader Jonathan Zwingina, had last year demanded a hefty bribe from him in order to confirm his nomination as a cabinet member. Because Ubani's article is so good, there is nothing to add or subtract from it.
Yet, in making a subtle case why el Rufai should be pardoned or why, to use a lingo, we should let bygone be bygone, Ubani, like all commentators before him, did not take into consideration the critically vital point of el Rufai�s membership of the national economic team and the likely implications for the team and, by extension, the economy, if any member is disgraced out of office for an offence most rational members of society consider pardonable.
This is, however, not to say that the minister's use of language is unassailable, whether he was referring to one or two senators or all 108 senators, some of whom have been accomplished professionals, academics, vice chancellors, diplomats, ministers, etc. el Rufai is an angry young man. He once stated that someone needs to do the kind of job he is doing is not so much brilliance as anger. This view is understandable. No country in the world has as much resource as Nigeria, and yet most of its citizens wallow in abject poverty. The country, blessed with tremendous natural resources, exports some 2.4 million barrels of crude oil daily at well over 30 dollars each. Still, about 90 million of its 130 million people live in excruciating poverty that is on one dollar per day or less. Ina country whose population grows at 2.8 per cent annually, about 70 per cent of the people have no jobs. What, then, are the prospects of a country like ours in a world where nations like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have achieved stunning progress even without any mineral deposits? Tell me, why wouldn�t el Rufai be angry, given the citizens' own prodigious talents and Nigeria's near inexhaustible possibilities? One dare speculate that it is this state of anger that gave rise to the minister�s outburst.
Now, to the point of el Rufai's membership of the economic team which has the Finance Minister, Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the leader. Other members are Professor Ojomu, chief economic adviser to the president; Professor Charles Soludo, governor of the Central Bank; Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, senior special assistant to the President on Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence, otherwise known as Due Process; and, of course, el Rufai himself. This is a small but thorough, efficient and patriotic team. Its work has earned praise from far and near, including from the World Bank president. When early this year the Financial Times of London did a sweeping survey of Nigeria, it concluded with the statement that Dr Okonjo- Iweala is "Nigeria's last hope to get its economy right". Perhaps, it is more appropriate to speak of the entire economic team providing the nation with its last chance to get cracking in the right direction, as countries like South Africa and Malaysia have done.
Unlike many other bodies where members fight ceaselessly over egos, sectional, religious, ethnic and ideological differences, members of the Nigerian economic team have demonstrated impressive solidarity and affection. When el Rufai had a brush with two senators last year, both the finance minister who had just been appointed from the World Bank where she was working as Vice President and Corporate Secretary and the senior presidential assistant on Due Process were with him all the way to the Senate and back. And a few days ago when el Rufai went to formally to apologise to the Senate, the two talented and principled ladies were with him.
Did anyone remember that el Rufai, Ezekwesili, and Okonjo-Iweala belong to two different religions, speak different languages and come from different sections of Nigeria? Can we now imagine what could have happened to the national economic team and its work if its cohesion had been disrupted by a forced withdrawal of a key member? It is, therefore, wise and commendable that both the Senate and the Presidency have chosen to act in the overriding public interest on this matter. Let the nation not be detained unduly by errors of the past, all the more so when such errors arose from the head, rather than the heart.
"He ignored the fact that he operates in a political environment where all there are, are totems to all manner of special interests", wrote Eziuche Ubani in an analytical observation. This observation is relevant to not just el Rufai but also to all members of the national economic team because they are pursuing a reform agenda, which practically seeks to change our societal values and even structures. There is nowhere in the world where reforms have been implemented successfully without beneficiaries of the debilitating status quo kicking back ferociously. As Ubani once again remarked, "without exception, there must be powerful interests, for whom it should not be taken for granted that they must come along".
It will be so unnatural and utterly out of character if many of the fat cats and beneficiaries of the status quo that the Okonjo-Iweala group has been fighting to replace with a modern and productive system have not been fighting so viciously to frustrate the reformers. If in the unlikely event that they have not been fighting so desperately, then, the el Rufai problem with the Senate has provided the reform opponents an ample opportunity to do so. In other words, a good number of those trying to use the Senate to cut el Rufai down to size have their own private interests and agendas! People like Professor Soludo, Professor Ojumo, Dr Okonjo-Iweala and Mrs Ezekwesili should get ready for their own hemlock. All manner of things will be soon be invented, dressed up to look nice, and used to smear members of the national economic team because of the biting reform programme.
The governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia says when he introduced a new capital base policy, he fought not just the battle of his life, but also a real war. Good a thing he survived and the policy succeeded. Today the Malaysian banking system is the toast of the global financial community. Indeed, to use a local example, if a single-minded reformer like Dr Dora Akunyili, Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) could survive the stiff opposition to her reform agenda which included assassination attempts on her and a series of sponsored newspaper articles against her person, members of the national economic team should survive today's tribulations and succeed in their mission, which will be for the benefit of all Nigerians both now and in the long run.
One other important point which Ubani raised is the competence of el Rufai�s media team. From all indications, the media team has not done a brilliant job, nor is it pro active. All the same, it shows that el Rufai or even members of the national economic team are not like most Nigerian public office holders who would have made spirited efforts to bribe journalists to kill the story about his oral faux pas or deny the statement after publication. The fact tat el Rufai�s office owned up to the statement, apologised for it and went to the Senate to formally recant it says a lot about his character. You may charge the minister with political naivety, but he certainly possesses values and integrity. el Rufai is an exceedingly bright person, so I expect him to learn the press and political ropes fast. He and the entire economic team need such skills to strike a healthy balance in their work.
Uwaoma is of the Political Science Dept, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu
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