Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai is the Governor of Kaduna State since 2015. He was the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory from 2003 to 2007 and the director of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) before then. Although he describes himself as an accidental public servant, there’s nothing accidental about El-Rufai’s way of life. He is calculative, opinionated and fore-sighted, very deep, knowledgeable and forthright. He is not afraid of controversies and is not afraid to step on toes. He is propelled by his interests and objectives which he intelligently cloaks as national interests. He has a dexterity in the coinage of words that dwarfs the acumen of his opponents. I had the opportunity of accidentally travelling together with him in a flight from Lagos to Abuja before 2015. As we sat together and got talking, he analysed the 2015 elections to me and the possible outcomes therefrom. After the 2015 general elections, his predictions and calculations materialised exactly as he saw them.
The next time I met him on an international flight and told him how his schedules as His Excellency will not afford us time to dig deep into current affairs, he looked at me and quipped “you still have a better name recognition than me”. El-Rufai is a person who doesn’t like to carry the air of superiority over anybody. He likes to appear ordinary and humble. When I was trying to draw his attention on his new status as Governor, he wanted to massage my ego by letting me know that as a Nollywood Star, I was still more easily recognisable than him as a Governor. He just wanted to give me a sense of belonging and convince me that he is the same El-Rufai, whether Governor or not. This is vintage El-Rufai, who will win you whichever angle you come from.
He has been governing Kaduna since 2015. The most defining legacy he will have as Governor will be on the issue of security. He was one of the arrow heads that used the issue of security to buffet the previous regime out of office. Reacting to the kidnap of the Chibok girls and the lackadaisical approach to their rescue by the previous regime, El-Rufai said, “As for rescuing the girls, we have seen examples of what countries do when this situation happens, you should have military action, on the one hand; the negotiation on the other. You should not foreclose anything because the lives of your citizens are at risk and you don’t want to lose one life. You don’t want to lose the life of one person.” Asked if he was in support of negotiation, he told the interviewer: “I’m in support of every option. When you have the lives of your citizens at risk, you should not take any option off the table. You should be flexible. You should listen. You should negotiate and look at the price”. What a fore-sighted prescription of solutions to prevailing precarious security situations.
Today, Mr El-Rufai is faced with a similar situation in Kaduna. In reaction to the dangerous security situation in Kaduna, Mallam El-Rufai asserted “My government will not negotiate with bandits”. To buttress his position, he repeatedly said that he will never negotiate with kidnappers or pay their ransom demands to free their victims or support any grant of amnesty to them. He even boasted, “Our position on Kaduna State has been clear and consistent: bandits, cattle rustlers and armed militia must be degraded and decimated to a state of unconditional submission to constituted authority.” In what seems like a test of El-Rufai’s audacious statements, several attacks were launched in Kaduna with many Kaduna residents kidnapped. Of particular interest were the kidnap recently of about 39 students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka and some students of Greenfield University, a private university in Kaduna State. Five of the University students have been found dead, suspected to have been killed by their assailants. The remaining students of the private university were released after their parents openly admitted to have paid a ransom of N180,000,000.00 (one hundred and eighty million naira) to the assailants.
We agree completely with Mallam El-Rufai that “Nigeria’s journey since the 2014 Chibok tragedy has proven that the solution to violent crimes, including terrorism and banditry, is a robust response from the state and its coercive agencies. The quantum of money paid as ransom following many negotiations with bandits have not stopped kidnappings, reduced their frequency or deterred the criminals.” But the question now is what happens where a robust response from the state and its coercive agencies to violent crimes, terrorism and banditry is lacking? This is where the leaders of Nigeria must learn some lessons from the security debacle in Kaduna and indeed in all parts of Nigeria.
A look at the advice Mallam El-Rufai gave to Goodluck Jonathan’s regime while facing security challenges reveals that there was no place he mentioned the payment of ransom or amnesty to kidnappers, he simply maintained that “I’m in support of every option. When you have the lives of your citizens at risk, you should not take any option off the table”. This is being very diplomatic and deploying the principle of strategic ambiguity. This gives hope to the villains and the victims because you have not said you will pay or not, this gains time for the government to deploy any strategy to decimate the bandits while they are awaiting any option favourable to them. If El-Rufai had applied this same strategy to the current security challenges in Kaduna, the story would have been different.
There are three components of El-Rufai’s audacious current posture: no negotiation; no ransom and no amnesty. The none existence of the first component forecloses the rest, while the existence of the first component does not guarantee the compliance of a party to the other two. This simply means that the mere fact that you are negotiating doesn’t mean you are paying the ransom or granting amnesty. Negotiation in itself is merely an opportunity for two disputing parties to dialogue and discuss with each other to find solutions to their disagreements. Negotiation is an Alternative Dispute Resolution strategy. Worst enemies have been known to negotiate in the past to find solutions. Even God negotiates with Satan on how certain issues on earth should be dealt with. Job 1:6-12 states “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.” If God can negotiate with Satan, any person who forecloses negotiation with another person is not being wise.
El-Rufai maybe right in refusing to pay ransom but may not be right in refusing to negotiate. When the children of Israel blackmailed God that they wanted to eat meat in the desert, after God had provided manna for them which contained all needed ingredients, God acceded to their demands, provided the meat for them, yet killed them as they were eating the meat. They repented from their covetousness and God proved to them that He could make meat available if He so wishes because He is God. Psalms 78:18, 27, 30, 31 put it solemnly, “And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust… He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea… They were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths, The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel”. If El-Rufai believes the state’s coercive powers are working, he would have used ransom as a bait to secure the lives of the citizens and killed the bandits before they eat the money. Remember, “when you have the lives of your citizens at risk, you should not take any option off the table”, so says El-Rufai.
Moreover, the variable of robust military option which El-Rufai was banking on is not within his command. In ADR, what you ask yourself is “what is the best alternative to a negotiated settlement? In this instance, death. As El-Rufai admonished, every government must look at the price of taking an option off the table. For now, the option of taking negotiation off the table is not palatable, it makes matters worse. The bandits still receive their ransom directly from the parents. Money is what they are looking for and money does the same things for the bandits whether from the government or from the parents, so the bandits don’t care from whom and the government loses face on both sides, the parents and bandits. Negotiation and the pretext of paying ransom has also provided an effective method of spying on the outlaws to understand their modus operandi with the aim of taking them out with their financial accomplices.
The Kaduna debacle has also raised the issue of State police. El-Rufai has distinguished himself in the area of infrastructural development in Kaduna. If the likes of El-Rufai is given the power of State police, I have no doubt that he can and will decimate the terrorists and bandits and then he can boldly say, no ransom, no amnesty. I can imagine the sense of frustration he might be going through at times. However, before we come to the level of state police, El-Rufai must adhere to his own advice, “you should not take any option off the table. You should be flexible. You should listen. You should negotiate and look at the price”.