The Sun News On-line

Former FCT minister, Nasiru el-Rufai might have thrown off his dogged loyalty to his former boss, ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, as he swore yesterday he never did the latter’s bidding while in office, even as he flatly denied ever being one of the protagonists of the moribund third term project which attempted to elongate the tenure of the immediate past administration.

Testifying before the Senate Committee on FCT yesterday, Malam el-Rufai also denied that his demolition of plots belonging to former PDP chairman, Ahmadu Ali and former Senate president, Pius Anyim was based on their strained relationship with the ex-president.

He said though he would prefer being spared to talk at length on the former president and the third term, but added: “When I come out with my book, every senator and Nigerian would be in a better position to know my stand on the third term, but I am not a protagonist.”
Asked by the committee to state categorically if his ‘special relationship’ with the former president did not affect the principle of good governance, el-Rufai said: “I would have simply said no, but I want to elaborate a little sir, if you go through the records, you will see that there is a basis for it.

“I will give an example with Senator Anyim Pius Anyim. Anybody knows that Senator Anyim and president Obasanjo had fallen out, so if all I did was to act president Obasanjo’s script, and then we found Anyim with a building which he spent over N100 million with no papers, is there any opportunity sir, to settle scores than that one? But we didn’t do that one,” he argued.
“I took a memo to the Federal Executive Council so that we have a decision that would save Anyim’s house,” he added.

At this juncture, some members countered that Anyim’s house was really demolished, but he answered that “it was the one we told him not to build after we had spared the first one, and did both with proper documentation from the FCT.”
El-Rufai, who was grilled by the committee from 11.40am to 5.45 pm, said both Atiku and Obasanjo were very close to him and therefore justified his participation along with former EFCC chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, in the Judicial Panel of Inquiry which indicted former vice-president Atiku Abubakar of fraud in the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), saying it was not to witch-hunt anybody.

He said: “I swear to God sir, that every thing I did in FCT, I did it in the honest belief that what I did to anyone whether good or bad is because the person deserved it, because I would die and God would ask me, and president Obasanjo would not be standing to defend me. I would have to defend myself before God. That is why sometimes if he said do this, I would say Mr. President this one I cannot do.”

We argued and go over it several times and in the end we go on”.
He insisted the Committee should note that in Nigeria, “any time you touch somebody, he says it is because I am the enemy of A or B or C or D. But the question is did you do wrong? If you have done wrong, accept it. And this is what I find very strange sir.”

As to whether he thought every thing he did to the best of his knowledge was proper in the eye of justice, the former Minister answered in the affirmative, lamenting, however that he would never take another public office in Nigeria because “I have made enough enemies and unless the likes of Senator Smart Adeyemi could be my running mate I and politics in this country would ever be parallel.

He reiterated his position that he was never saw any of the 76 court orders said to have been violated by the ministry while he was in charge just as he claimed that all the contract misappropriations were not done with either his knowledge or permission and so some of his subordinates should be called to answer.