School Enrollment: El-Rufai’s Latest Publicity Stunt and the Shape of Things to Come in 2023 By Dodoh Okafor
On Monday, 23rd September 2019, the Kaduna state governor- Nasir El Rufai – was in the news after TV cameras captured him – along with his wife- taking their six-year-old son-Abubakar Al-Siddique to enroll at a public school in Kaduna city- Kaduna Capital School.
Mr. Rufai himself did not let TV cameras alone do the work for him. He took to his official twitter handle- @KadunaGov to bring the news to the attention of his followers announcing thus- “Abubakar Al-Siddique El-Rufai has today enrolled as a Primary One pupil of Kaduna Capital School” It was a development that generated diverse reactions from Nigerians with many commentators praising the governor for taking the bold initiative to live up to a pledge he made several years ago to take the boy to a public school when he comes of age.
Several commentators were also happy that at last, we have a governor in Nigeria courageous enough to risk the security of a member of his family by placing him at a location where he could be a target of criminal elements and prey to his political rivals.
It is not for nothing that almost everyone with the means either sends his child to a very secure private school or bundles them overseas. These individuals appreciate the fact that the country is unsafe and a whole lot can go wrong in the twinkle of an eye. Nobody wants to hear that his son or daughter has been kidnapped or killed because he wants to look good in the eyes of the public.
In Abuja where there is some semblance of security compared to other parts of Nigeria, most public officials and rich individuals send their children and wards to schools in Maitama, Asokoro, and Wuse where there are police formations every 500 meters. In Lagos, the story is the same. You will hardly find the son of a minister, a commissioner, a senator, a member of the National Assembly or even a state lawmaker attending area council schools or secondary schools managed by the public education authorities.
If you find these super-privileged children schooling in Nigeria universities, they are in private schools where special efforts are made to secure and keep them away from public attention. The parents know better not to ever visit them in the schools for fear of exposing them to the associated dangers.
It is indeed curious that children who were comfortable and safe associating with their peers are withdrawn from our local schools and shipped off to foreign locations as soon as “God blesses” their parents.
Before the 2015 general elections, Mr. Okezie Ikpeazu’s children were undergraduates at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike. Whence their father was announced the winner of the gubernatorial election in the state in April that year, they were immediately relocated to Europe to continue their education. It is doubtful if they have ever set foot in Nigeria since then. This is not an isolated case as several other persons who also rose to public positions following the elections quickly took their families to “somewhere safe.”
In light of this, those praising Governor El Rufai for “demonstrating exemplary leadership” do have their point and we must acknowledge that it takes some measure of courage to do what Nasir El Rufai did on Monday. But beyond the gesture, we must look at the substance of the whole exercise to ask if El Rufai is interested in promoting public education or merely playing a game we have all become too familiar with it. Nigeria is a political country and everyone is conscious of his ambition- doing whatever he or she feels would advance a political ambition or undermine a perceived threat.
Have we not seen previously unapproachable politicians buying roadside corns from women in the streets and eating them in front of the cameras? How about those who suddenly become patrons at “mama put joints” during electioneering campaigns to give the impression of having the common touch? In the heat of campaigns, political aspirants are seen hugging market women, visiting hospitals, kneeling before priests in churches, paying courtesy calls to traditional rulers and kneeling for blessings, visiting schools to play with school children or initiating projects they have no intention of executing.
Interestingly, there used to be a time when politicking was for a season after which everything becomes sober and governance gets some measure of attention. Not anymore. These days, those who won the last election are consolidating to hold on to power in the next election while those that lost are working hard to return in the next round of balloting. To a typical Nigerian politician, every day is an election day and every opportunity is exploited for political gain.
So what was El Rufai’s motive when he assembled dozens of cameramen to accompany him to Kaduna Capital School? Abubakar Al-Siddique’s education was only half the story. Mr. Nasir El Rufai who was an FCT minister between 2003 and 2007 is a man of very high political ambition.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo- under whose presidency Mr. Rufai came to national light first as the head of the Bureau of Public Enterprises- the agency that oversaw the privatization of public assets in the heady days of the OBJ regime before eventually he promoted him to be minister in charge of Abuja- alleged in his book- “My Watch,” that Mr. Rufai was an overambitious fellow who is only loyal to self.
El Rufai has been touted as one of the candidates angling to succeed Muhammadu Buhari when his tenure runs through in 2023. He is believed in several circles to be a favorite of the Aso Rock Cabal who are ruling Nigeria under the Muhammadu Buhari franchise. It was also alleged that in 2017 following Muhammadu Buhari’s long term illness and hospitalization in an unknown hospital in the UK, El Rufai who would always present himself as a Buhari loyalist allegedly lobby then acting President Yemi Osinbajo to appoint him vice president should Buhari not make it back.
Buhari himself confirmed as much- though without mentioning El Rufai’s name at an event in Jos- the Plateau state capital in March 2018. El Rufai- it was also alleged fell out with former president- Umar Musa Yar’Adua because Nasir had hoped that Olusegun Obasanjo-who sponsored the former Katsina governor to the presidency in 2007 would have chosen him. According to Chukwuma Soludo, former CBN governor- El Rufai was disappointed that Obasanjo snubbed him after he (El Rufai) supported the former president’s third term plot in the hope of taking over from him eventually.
El Rufai since 2011 has been positioning himself to inherit Buhari’s famed “10 million votes in the north.” He has morphed from being a technocrat and a reform-minded individual with a nationalistic outlook under the Olusegun Obasanjo days to a Fulani irredentist, announcing once in a 2012 tweet that: “… anyone, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it takes.” He has done everything within his power in the intervening years to remake his image in the mold of an “educated Buhari.” He has not commented murderous Fulani herdsmen has not condemned the bandits killing innocent families in cold blood in Kaduna, if he has ever spoken up against the Boko Haram terrorist network, it must be a closely guarded secret.
Rather than condemn the criminals mauling innocent people in a state he is its chief security officer, Mr. El Rufai has taken it upon himself to support any decision he believes would win him the favor of the northern political establishment. When Justice Walter Onnoghen was illegally suspended by Muhammadu Buhari in January this year, Nasir El Rufai was the first to praise Buhari for what manifestly was a coup against the judiciary by a man who is no stranger to coup plots having truncated Nigeria’s democracy in 1983 and participated keenly in the bloody July 1966 coup. El Rufai has also targeted Southern leaders within the APC including Bola Ahmed Tinubu and several others.
Nasir El Rufai it was who lied on national TV that there was an attack in Kajuru a few days to the general election this February. It took Chidi Odinkalu- former chairman of National Human Rights Commission- coming on TV to refute the claims by the governor before Nigerians realized that Olusegun Obasanjo- El Rufai’s former employer- may have a point when he said that El Rufai has a “pathological penchant for telling barefaced lies.”
El Rufai is one of the many politicians in Nigeria who understands how to manipulate religion and ethnicity to achieve political gains. As governor- Nasir El Rufai is the chief security officer for Kaduna but the man does not care that under his watch, Kaduna has become one of the most insecure locations in Nigeria- sadly- the targets of the regular attacks in communities are those who do not profess El Rufai’s faith.
All of the acts of petulance from the Kaduna governor are designed to achieve one single objective: make himself appealing to a certain section of the northern polity who believe that you must be a northern irredentist and take unreasonable positions in national matters- no matter your level of education and exposure- very much like Ango Abdullahi and Junaid Mohammed. El Rufai knows that when push comes to shove, the balance will tilt in favor of those who elevate sectionalism over national interests in matters of politics and serious conversations.
So how Nasir El Rufai who many insist was playing politics with his son’s school profit from his latest soap opera? Simple: he knows that Nigerians are gullible and would fall for photo ops. Remember the 2015 picture of Buhari and Osinbajo drinking “tea with N20 Milo sachet,” and how it portrayed them in the eyes of many as decent men who do not like the life of private jets and “expensive wines?” Well, now we know better.
As earlier mentioned, El Rufai did not leave anything to chance in staging his latest show. He brought in camera crew, posted it on his Twitter page, got his social media errand boys to share and retweet and before anyone made sense of what was going on, it was the most-talked-about story on Nigeria’s social media circles.
But in my estimation- it was one of those stories without substance. Would a Lateef Jakande take TV cameras to accompany his son to enroll in a school- abandoning government business in the process? Would Peter Obi use twitter to broadcast what he believes is the rational thing to do? Did Alex Ekwueme not return his son- Obioma- to Nigeria from the UK to continue his education in Nigeria as soon as he became vice president? Did that suddenly become a talking point?
Does it not sound foolish that politicians are praised for sending their sons to the same schools Nigerians send their kids? Do we not see heads of governments in Europe ride bicycles, take the train or eat at public restaurants? How often do you see them shut down the social media because they did what millions of their fellow citizens do every day? Perhaps it’s about time El Rufai is told an important truth: no man in the image and likeness of the present administration would rule Nigeria again, many Nigerians have learned from the grave errors and public and political deceptions of 2015.