Malam Nasir el Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, needs no introduction in Nigerian politics. Many people across the country are strongly opposed to him and his guts. However, people who believe in him, mostly those we call ‘hardliners’, also do so fervently. It is for this reason that many call him a rabidly polarising figure.
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Speaking as a guest recently at a National Conference in Abuja on ‘Strengthening Democracy in Nigeria,’ the former governor articulated the fundamental problem of the country as that of poor leadership, which he attributed to the system of leadership recruitment. For him, surfeits of delegates who elect candidates in the political parties are illiterate. “You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-literates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today.”
He claimed that the APC was originally established to combat corruption, rebuild the economy, and enhance security, but that those goals had been abandoned. “The problems that led to the creation of the APC remain unresolved, but I no longer believe the APC is interested in addressing them,” he reportedly said. He further stated: “I no longer recognise the APC. No party organ has met in two years – no caucus, no NEC, nothing. You don’t even know if it is a one-man show or it’s a zero-man show.”
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In what amounted to signalling a potential defection to another party or a cue for the APC to reach out to him and negotiate, he further claimed that he remained a member of the APC but that the gap between him and the party was widening.
Former Governor El Rufai’s track record as a politician, including as governor of Kaduna State, is not altogether noble, which is why his attempt to pontificate from a moral high ground has been eliciting sneers and shaking of heads in several quarters. While many, including his critics, concede he is smart and audacious, he has also been variously called an autocratic, arrogant and vindictive politician, who had no qualms demolishing the properties of political opponents on a whim or promoting a Muslim-Muslim ticket in a state with a substantial Christian population.
He has also been called a self-serving politician who is only loyal to himself, and adept in turning against his political mentors. Instances usually given include allegedly abandoning former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who was said to have been instrumental to his being appointed the inaugural DG of the Bureau of Public Enterprises in 1999. Similarly, after labelling candidate Buhari as “serially unelectable,.” he was also paradoxically also credited with playing a leading role in convincing him to run for the presidency a fourth time in 2015, which he won.
Though el-Rufai rode on his coattail to become governor of Kaduna State, he also turned against him towards the end of his second term and teamed up with Tinubu, even though he had never been on Tinubu’s political corner before that that moment.
Given the foregoing, some have raised the question of whether El Rufai’s sanctimonious postulations on the challenges of leadership recruitment in the country should be disregarded, following the dictum that “sometimes, the messenger is the message.” However, given also his shrewdness in politically positioning and re-positioning himself at auspicious moments, and the fact that he still has his own constituency of support, I feel it is first important to interrogate his assumptions and conclusions:
First, El Rufai claimed that the APC was originally established to combat corruption, rebuild the economy, and enhance security, but the goals had been abandoned. “The problems that led to the creation of the APC remain unresolved, but I no longer believe the APC is interested in addressing them,” he was quoted as saying. Many people will disagree with this assertion. Was the APC really founded on such a noble ground or was it to capture power from President Jonathan following the alleged feelings in the North that Jonathan contesting the 2015 election amounted to short-changing the North?
The feeling was that Buhari, who had been contesting for the Presidency since 2003 without being able to get the requisite 25 per cent in any state outside the North, needed Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria, which had a tight grip in the South-West, and other regional parties like the ANPP and a faction of APGA, to provide the needed geographical spread. For Tinubu, it was also an opportunity to plot his own political ascent, hence he boldly declared during 2023 presidential campaign that “it is my turn” (emilokan). In fact it can be argued that all the political parties in the country are mere special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for capturing political power.
Second, if as El Rufai claimed, the problem of leadership recruitment is because the delegates that elect the leaders are illiterate, we will then assume that the solution is a sort of creation of delegates who are philosopher-kings (i.e. an army of highly educated of delegates). Here, El Rufai seems to buy into the argument that the problem of Nigeria is that of leadership, but blames it on illiterate delegates (apparently at Party Conventions). This sort of argument, however, overlooks the fact that even during the military era when there were no delegates to elect the military dictators, the quality of leadership was not necessarily better. He also ignored the role of environmental variables – ethnicity, religion, poverty, entitlement mentality, as influencers of the leadership recruitment process.
Besides, even among the very educated, elections anywhere in the world tend to be driven more by emotions than logic, and this is especially so in our clime, given our environmental peculiarities. For this, El-Rufai’s argument about illiteracy being the peril of the country’s leadership recruitment process fails to be convincing or at best only partially correct. His narrow focus on “illiterate delegates” and internal party democracy and declaration that the gulf between him and his party was widening, seems to suggest wrongly that he was a consummate democrat.
I agree that leadership recruitment is a problem but I see it from a different prism. For me, our current system of leadership recruitment – whether at the party primaries or even at the elections proper – can only throw up people with deep pockets and certain rough edges. Nigerian politics and the system of recruitment into its leadership cadre is not a game for the lily-livered, which is why many “ladies and gentlemen” choose to stay away. The solution for me therefore is not necessarily in parties having internal democracies – as desirable as this is – but in getting a leader who can emerge through the current corrupt system but will then turn against that system in what would amount to a class, ethnic and religious suicide.
It will for now be day-dream to hope that a leader can emerge outside the current system of leadership recruitment. Unfortunately, since politicians promise heaven and earth when seeking power, it is difficult to know beforehand a leader who will become radicalised by the office and turn against the system that brought him or her to power. We are more used to previously radical-sounding“progressives” being de-radicalised by the system.
In a-three- part article I published to commemorate the country’s independence last year entitled ‘Nigeria@64: Celebrations in the Season of Ennui? ’, I argued as follows:
The dominant impression the power wielders at all levels of governance give, is that it is their “turn”, and since most seem not even to believe in the country, shorn of all pretences, they are telling their critics, or those proffering unsolicited advice, to “go hug a transformer”, or “go to court” if they do not like their style of governance or their explanations for why things are the way they are. Depending on whom you are, their estimation of the followership you command and your ethnic, party or religious affiliations, you could also be accused of “bad belle” because you or the candidate you supported lost the last election. You will sure be on the radar of the EFCC or other security agencies who will one day invite you for questioning on suspicions of ‘terrorism financing’
The combination of all these seem to have pushed most Nigerians into a state of ennui – bored and tired of everything. They appear tired of their leaders and distrustful of those angling to replace them. They scoff at suggestions for making things right and tell you that our problem is not the absence of good laws, but implementing them. I suspect that many of those joining the ‘japa’ syndrome, (including people who are doing reasonably well here), do so not necessarily because they feel they will have a better life where they are emigrating to, but because they want to escape from it all for the sake of their sanity and humanity. Nigeria is fast approximating the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ in which life is short, nasty and brutish. Hope – that critical ingredient that gives meaning to life- seems to be evaporating quickly for most Nigerians.
Rotimi Amaechi, former Governor of Rivers State, and former Transport Minister, in the same conference where Malam Nasir el Rufai floated his thesis on the problem of leadership recruitment in the country, argued that part of the problem is the unwillingness of the electorate to defend their vote. Well, if the ‘people’ appear unwilling to risk their lives to defend their vote it could partly be because they are not fully convinced that even the person they are to defend their vote for will make a difference in their material circumstances when he or she comes to power. And that is, if the politician in question bothers to even remember that he or she made promises to them during the campaign seasons.
Jideofor Adibe is a professor of Political Science and International Relations at Nasarawa State University and founder of Adonis & Abbey Publishers (www.adonis-abbey.com). He can be reached at: 0705 807 8841 (WhatsApp and Text messages only).
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