Mallam Nasir El-Rufai is a Nigerian who basks in controversy like a reptile out of water in high noon. It does not matter in what hue or in whose company you find him. He is ready to square up to the next guy. It is all about El-Rufai’s interest even if it masquerades as a national pride. He is one of our enduring peacocks.

He is also a chameleon of interest. Whether as a lackey, a bureaucrat, a protégé, a master, or a turncoat, he is not afraid to stake a claim, and he is always smoking for a fight like a snake backed into a corner. He may strike and he may even be stricken. But boredom is the last emotion you feel with this slight man of Napoleonic ego.

El-Rufai is not about the morality or justice. He is about the fight, the theatrics of the brickbat hurled. He knows his quarry well, so he engages him or them with the gusto of a marksman. He is amoral, a neutralist with an armour. He shoots but he does not always hit the target. Hitting the target is not important if by merely shooting you set all the birds aflutter and screaming for shelter.

He has done these well in the course of his public career. Now, he seems ready to play the role not only as a critic, but I daresay as a “revolutionary.” That is why the recent controversy over an article he wrote was only a phase in the metamorphosis of this man who understands his country so well. He is our subversive cynic.

Sometimes I think of him the way I think of such artistes in the United States as Britney Speers and Madonna, who have a knack for unveiling the foibles of the system. Many speak ill of them, but the same society craves for a new act in their evolving histrionics. They love them. They hate them. But they want them.

El-Rufai does not have the thespian assiduity of these accomplished beauties. But he does know how to work the society to his own frenzy. He is a vain man, and he is not afraid to flaunt that either. He makes gaffes, and he does not regret that, too. He just has to set the fire on the roof top and he will jubilate in quiet mischief as everyone in the house runs like a hare. Quietude is not what you normally associate with him though. Once or twice, when I have met with him, he looked like someone caged in until he got the chance to talk. And he loved the opportunity. In a few minutes, the roof caved in.

It is in the context that we must understand the recent article he wrote. It was meant to stir, and there was nothing wrong with that if you asked him. He probably did not intend to correct, but to infuriate, to remind the National Security Adviser that the El-Rufai who was in office a few years ago and who stirred controversy over land allocation and corruption issues, and who was in exile, is not about to be coaxed or coerced into silence.

El-Rufai wrote the article and the NSA’s men claimed he got the facts wrong, about how much was allocated to his office, over N200 billion. They said he got it wrong, and they picked him up. One year ago or even when he was the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, it would have been unthinkable to say that El-Rufai was arrested by the security forces.

Yet, they picked him up. El-Rufai says he got his facts from the budget, and he has the right to say so. So there. If he got his facts wrong, arresting him was not the place of democracy. The security forces fell into his hands. Rather than win on the platform of debate, they resorted to the strong arm and lost the argument. This is a system for the force of facts, not the force of arms. Unwittingly, they turned El-Rufai, who once defended a system of feline and corrupt rule, into a hero of free speech. If the security forces had their facts, they could easily have turned him into a public shame. Rather, it is the small man who now looms large for civility.

I learnt they were disappointed that he was a turncoat. How could anyone be disappointed at El-Rufai? A man who is capable of any emotion is capable of any betrayal. So he was once in government. Does that mean he should not take on government? What makes the government sacrosanct? We want more people in government who will lash out at government and unveil its seedy underside.

In the U.S., it is common. A man serves in government and he gives his honest account or, at least, an honest account as he sees it. We saw the story of Rumsfeld, or Clinton. They told their stories. It is an opportunity for us to see how the systems work from inside.

At one time, El-Rufai was the good guy of the security forces. He was the one with whom the Owu chief was well pleased, the one who knew who was safe for Nigeria and who should go to jail. He was the quintessential patriot, and he condemned others for lack of fervour for Nigeria.

Yet if you looked at his career well, you would admit that as FCT minister, he was transformational. He brought order, neatness and even picturesque allure to the city that was falling into an Alao-Akala Ibadan.

So, he did well as a minister. But also as a minister he was Baba’s lackey, fighting his every war and defending the corrupt system and the despotic “democrat.” He once told me in an interview that the time had not come for us to be worried over the issue of conflict of interest in office. Even when some raised uproar over it, he never tried to my knowledge to defend himself.

He served Atiku well when he was his protégé. When he turned over to OBJ and Obj fought with Atiku, he knew where the power lay, so he turned coat and pitched his tent with the Owu chief. It was the amoral El-Rufai at work. He swung without a squeak.

When Yar’Adua took over, he was Yar’Adua’s man before he was not. When Jonathan became president, he was for the meek man until things turned sour. Now he is serenading Buhari whom we once nudged as unelectable. In an interview in The Nation on Sunday, he said that the man has changed. Changed from what, Nasir? Other than his allegiance to democracy over a decade ago, he is still as inflexible as his ramrod stature.

El-Rufai knew how to work the system, and somehow, it made him into a sort of public cause célèbre. He somehow helps to show us the bad side of the system because he has not been the good side himself. In the way he allocated land, we learned how government shares our resources. From his role as a lackey, we knew how people moved up in government. From his serial betrayals, we understood that playing the harlot is the way to gains. As master, he made people work for him and that, ironically, is how you command loyalists even if you are not one yourself. As a critic and “revolutionary,” he is trying to come full cycle. He is telling us that he can reveal and revel in the rottenness of our system, he being part of it.

He knows how to game the system, draw attention to himself, laugh at us, and still sleep well at night. From the recent fight with the system, he has shown that you can move from being an establishment mainstay to a nemesis of the system. We need more of him.

otokx:

Is it not the "God is my witness" man?