Mallam Nasir El-Rufai came into the public limelight in 1999 when
democracy returned back to the country after a sixteen year hiatus of military
misrule. The then President Olusegun Obasanjo made El-Rufai the
Director-General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) which was saddled
with the gargantuan responsibility of disposing some of the assets hitherto
held by the government to private investors. It was as the Minister of the
Federal Capital Territory that his name became permanently etched in the minds
of many Nigerians as he had the ambition of restoring the original master plan
of the city.
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| *El-Rufai |
Many houses including those owned by prominent
Nigerians were bulldozed as the then diminutive minister spared no one and took
no prisoners. Some of his die-hard supporters pushed his name forward as a
possible successor to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007 after the alleged failure
of the latter’s third term bid. For some reasons best known to Baba Iyabo as
the former President is fondly called, he settled for the Late Umaru Musa
Yar’adua who was then governing Katsina state. El-Rufai went into political
winter for eight years after his former boss’s Presidency and he was hounded by
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to give an account of his
eight-year stewardship especially as the minister. He went on to write his
memoir – ‘The Accidental Public Servant’ which was an interesting read
even though some critics accused him of hagiography.
