I ACTED AS THE VICE PRESIDENT UNDER OBASANJO--El RUFAI

Written by Adenuga Tunde

It was as if the newly release book of Mallam Nasri El rufai was set as a trigger to release the bullets in the minds of some people. Or is this a sign of something great in this country? Knocks and kudos are tripping in from many quarters including the camps of the former president Olusegun Obasanjo and his former Vice, Alhadji Atiku Abubakar. 

Apart from the 4 mistakes of the former president while in office according to the former FCT minister, Mallam El rufai, he also made a flash point of major roles he played, not only as the FCT minister, under the Obasanjo's regime, but also as vice president of Nigeria even though it was Alhadji Atiku Abubakar that the entire Nigerians thought was playing the the vice president role especially when the battle between the two leaders was obvious. To quote him, he said, “Indeed in

the final year of Obasanjo’s presidency, I was not just running the FCT but involved in an array of activities - I was required to handle the portfolios of the minister of commerce and industry (twice) minister of interior, chair of national or cabinet committees on electric power supply improvement, sale of federal government houses in Abuja, national ID card, development of a national mortgage system, public service reforms, review of salaries and emoluments in the public service,  (including the military and the police) destruction of contraband, and was at various times points the oversight and liaison with chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the National Population Commission.

“In the eyes of many, including some of my cabinet colleagues, I had by default become a de facto vice president. The more I sorted out these issues, the more Obasanjo threw others at me, and it just became too much.

“Being the final year of his presidency, people did not have to make too big of a leap to conclude that Obasanjo was preparing me for anointment to succeed him. Obasanjo even sent me to the Niger Delta to work with James Ibori to find a way to create jobs in Warri.

“He established a presidential commission on job creation in Warri and made me the chair of it,  so I ended up having to make three or four trips to Delta State just to meet with the state government and youth organizations to try replicating the job creation and entrepreneurship programmes we introduced in Abuja that spawned  many new small businesses and thousands of construction related jobs.

El-Rufai however said that while people thought Obasanjo was preparing him for something, the truth really was that no anointment was being contemplated.

“I knew that I was simply an overworked machine and nothing more because I know my boss very well,” he stated.

He said assignments given to him pitched him against then vice president Atiku Abubakar and some of his colleagues in the federal cabinet.

“The record of extra ministerial assignments listed above and the history of my apparent closeness to the president neither endeared me to Atiku Abubakar, who was estranged from Obasanjo at the time, nor some of my ambitious cabinet colleagues,” he said, adding that the late president Umaru Yar’adua also did not like him for the same reason.

The allegation against the late Yar adua was openly challenged and disagreed by the Central Bank president, Mallam, Lamido Sanusi. That since the late president was no longer around, he could not defend himself. The Atiku Camp has been firing back since yesterday on this allegation.