Reacting to this week’s launch of a new book on the life, times and legacy of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, former federal Minister and two-term governor of Kaduna State from 2015 to 2023, Nasir el-Rufai, appealed to Nigerians to let the former President “rest in peace”. Expectedly, a major book on a man like Buhari, who served first as military Head of State after the collapse of the Second Republic in December 1983 and was elected President for eight years after three unsuccessful bids for the position in 2003, 2007 and 2011, is bound to generate a lot of interest and controversies. This is moreso because Buhari was an enigma for the better part of his private and public life and, like most great leaders, was as intensely admired by his supporters as he was derided with equal passion by his traducers.
Titled ‘From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, and written by Dr Charles Omole, Director-General of the Institute for Police and Security Policy Research, the book gives insider details on such issues as Buhari’s position on the choice of his successor in the run up to the 2023 presidential election, how the plot to impose former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, as presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) failed or the late President’s management and leadership style.
From media reports of the contents of the book, the author’s research involved detailed interviews with close family relations of Buhari such as his widow, Aisha Buhari, and some of those who worked closely with him as President such as former Director-General of the Department of State Security (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, former Inspectors-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu and Usman Alkali Baba, and former Chief Security Officer to Buhari, Abubakar Idris, among others. Surely, these are people who are in a position to speak authoritatively on the subject of the book, even though their account of events and interpretation of issues will naturally be coloured by their subjective value-preferences.
Although el-Rufai admits that he has not yet read the 600-page book, he cautioned against the “selective revelations” about a man who is no longer alive to give his own account, stressing that “Explaining the thoughts and motivations of a complex leader through selective anecdotes risks distorting, rather than preserving his legacy.” One would have thought that the stormy petrel should have at least read portions of the book before making magisterial pronouncements on the content, especially when he admitted that “it is possible that some media reports lack context.”
Nevertheless, he felt confident enough on the basis of perfunctory media reportage to conclude that “many of the so-called revelations attributed to the late President appear one-sided and unfair”. el-Rufai is himself a published author. His reminiscences on his not-uneventful public life, titled ‘The Accidental Public Servant’, generated considerable media attention when published in 2013 and understandably attracted its fair share of controversies.
Rather than calling on potential authors on the life of Buhari to perhaps exercise self-censorship to allow his soul to ‘rest in peace’, el-Rufai should avail the reading public of his own insider account of the public life and leadership style of a man he was privileged to observe and work with at close quarters. He undoubtedly has the ability to deliver a compelling read in this regard, which will, nevertheless, most certainly elicit its own controversies, disagreements, debates and rebuttals.
But what actuated this latest intervention by el-Rufai in a statement with regard to the Buhari book launch? It certainly was no high-minded concern for the accuracy of the narratives about the late President or the need to preserve the sanctity of his legacy. No, what was at play was obviously his persisting bitterness and fury against the Tinubu administration, which apparently committed the unpardonable sin of acceding to the security report that declared el-Rufai unfit for ministerial appointment, leading to his exclusion from the current Federal Executive Council.
Thus, apart from making baseless insinuations about the venue of the book launch, which was the State House Conference Centre, Abuja, el-Rufai asserted that “More troubling was the presence of long-time critics of Buhari, some of whom now hold high office, delivering glowing, but clearly faked tributes. These are individuals who once blamed his administration for nearly every challenge facing Nigeria, but who now appear eager to revise history—perhaps to deflect responsibility for present failures.”
President Bola Tinubu was one of those who paid fulsome tribute to his predecessor at the book launch, but this can certainly not be credibly described as ‘faked tributes’. Throughout Buhari’s eight years as President, Tinubu never once criticised his administration in public, even when many leaders and groups in the Southwest were vehement in their denunciation of the latter’s politics, policies and leadership style. During the campaigns for the 2023 presidential election, President Tinubu severally stated that he would continue with Buhari’s legacies, eliciting furious reactions from caustic critics of the former President.
And since he stepped into Buhari’s shoes as President in May 2023, Tinubu has pursued his government’s reforms with singleness of resolve while studiously refusing to dissipate energy on distracting criticisms of his predecessor’s administration. He has publicly stated that the government is a continuum, and he had naturally inherited both assets and liabilities from the previous government.
What exactly irks el-Rufai about President Tinubu paying glowing tribute to Buhari at the book launch or the event taking place at the State House Conference Centre? After all, was Buhari not a former President elected on the platform of the ruling APC? Obviously, el-Rufai ‘s calculation, along with many other no less bitter members of Buhari’s defunct Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), one of the legacy parties that merged to form the APC, was that they would inherit the consistent bank of the late President’s 12 million northern votes following his demise.
It did not matter that they never displayed the asceticism, frugality, modesty and commitment to the northern talakawa that earned Buhari his unprecedented grassroots support in the region despite his meagre material means. They thus are irked by the emotional and unprecedentedly grand and glorious state burial that Tinubu accorded his predecessor to the obvious approbation and approval of Buhari’s teeming support base in the North. This is also their grouse with the President’s continuing to honour Buhari’s memory with his presence and generous appreciation of the latter at the book launch.
Unsurprisingly, el-Rufai declares that “It was also unsettling to see individuals celebrating Buhari in death who had neither his trust nor his respect in life. President Buhari was a principled man who did not easily forget personal or political disrespect, and he made his preferences clear to those around him. Unfortunately for the former Kaduna State governor and his fellow travellers, Tinubu is the sitting President, and he enjoys the support of members of his predecessor’s family and a significant number of leading members of his larger political family.
Nasir’s wrath and frustration will most likely grow more incendiary over the next few weeks and months especially as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) continues in its failure to gain momentum, the ruling APC systematically utilizes its incumbency to strengthen its political grip nationwide, the President’s economic reforms increasingly yield more fruits with positive impacts on living standards and the former Kaduna State governor’s influence and acceptance in the state he presided over for eight years persists in its downward trajectory.
We can therefore expect increasingly combustible radio and television interviews as well as explosive social media outbursts by the diminutive mobile time bomb dangling delicately on the fragile fringes of treason.
Last week, we examined a write-up purportedly written by one Mohammed Bello Doka titled ‘Is Tinubu waging a war against the Muslim North?’ shared by el-Rufai on his Facebook page. By disseminating the inciting and deliberately provocative article, el-Rufai openly identified with the extremist views of the writer. The piece sought to instigate the Muslim North against the Tinubu administration by falsely claiming that Muslim public officials were being purged because of their religion and replaced by Northern Christians. It tried to whip up hostility against Middle Belt Christians by far Northern Muslims.
Mohammed Doka reiterated a false allegation repeated severally on national television by el-Rufai that the Tinubu administration was paying huge sums of money in negotiations with bandits, even after this claim had been vehemently denied by the security agencies, and el-Rufai has provided no proof of his allegation. Again, the piece claimed that the Tinubu administration is indifferent to the insecurity in the North and that the cost of one road in Lagos exceeds the security votes of all northern states combined. Again, no attempt was made to provide empirical validation for this wild assertion.
Yet, the security agencies have made no efforts to invite both Mohammed Doka and el-Rufai to offer proof of such utterly false and potentially destabilising information being brazenly peddled, which will encourage their persistence on this reckless path with dangerous implications for national harmony, stability and unity.
Other dangerous claims in the post shared by el-Rufai is that insecurity is being deliberately encouraged in the North to discourage significant turnout of voters in the region in 2027; that Northern Muslims occupying public office in the Tinubu administration are complicit in ‘betraying’ the North and Islam; and that Northern Muslims in the administration are being marginalized and intimidated and Christians favoured to placate President Donald Trump.
By sharing this article, which is obviously the product of a deranged extremist religious mind, el-Rufai confirms the notorious reputation he acquired as governor of Kaduna State for eight years- that of a closet unhinged Ayatollah difficult to distinguish in temperament and outlook from forest bandits and terrorists. But why does it appear that the country’s security agencies see nothing and hear nothing and are so inexplicably paralysed to curb the reckless hubris of the el-Rufais of this world?
