Daily Trust - the online edition

A careful reading of Is’haq Modibbo Kawu’s "El-Rufai, Obasanjo and Abuja Land Grab" which appeared on the back page of Daily Trust of Thursday, April 17, 2008 brings one into a close encounter with several aspects of the comic stage craft which the Senate FCT probe has degenerated into. It is appalling that a fact-finding mission which promised so much has thus far delivered very little in terms of real substance. This is precisely so because the moment the pathetically meager facts are separated from hearsay, what remains becomes nothing but empty bombast and opinionated, self-serving commentaries in the press by very desperate people who want to fan the embers of alarm and hysteria with their lynch mob mentality.

It is thus either that Modibbo Kawu misses this point in his commentary on the subject or that he too is one of the systematic promoters and peddlers of serial untruth about the true state of affairs in the FCT, particularly running El-Rufai’s tenure as its Minister. His piece is representative of these various aspects I alluded to and emblematic of the season of unnecessary unbelief that has gripped the land.

An analysis of his article, and indeed the bulk of the opinions so far expressed in the print media on the subject reveals the following tendencies: an objective assessment of the facts on the ground before and after El-Rufai held sway as FCT Minister, with the inescapable conclusion that he was a dynamic, visionary performer who turned the fortunes of Abuja city for the better; a garbage of half-truths, outright lies, rumour-peddling and pepper soup gossip that distorts empirically verifiable reality as we know it, and a self-seeking diatribe on El-Rufai by all manners of individuals who either have a personal score to settle with him or have been handsomely paid to aid and abet the settling of personal scores.

I will now examine Modibbo Kawu’s article on the above criteria for the enlightenment of readers who must have become seduced by his craftily constructed and delivered convoluted logic. On the facts regarding the FCT administration. Kawu made the following statements: "El-Rufai did some very positive things in the effort to reclaim the FCT, as I have always acknowledged in my write-ups…", "even the good that he achieved (and no one can deny his focus and ability)…" and "the objective observer of the FCT today will not fail to see the creeping return to the old ways of rot, chaos and lawlessness. It stands in contrast to a lot of the good things which El-Rufai’s leadership of the process of reclamation of the city did while he held sway". No decent person can fault the logic and poignancy of this conclusion about the tenure of a man who literally dragged Abuja out the morass of confusion, disorder, dirt and squalor it had degenerated into a sparkling, self-confident modern capital city.

Regarding the issue of generalized opinion, hearsay and rumour-peddling, we also have enough examples from Kawu’s article. In his words: "what I heard was that El-Rufai had been opposed to Media Trust and its public actions because we were opposed to reforms" and "if these allegations are true, and I say that they still remain allegations, because El-Rufai has not settled his side of the story". Yet, inspite of the certainty in his mind that several disclosures about the FCT at the Senate hearing are mere unsubstantiated postulations, he readily formed a very negative opinion about the man and proceeded to call him unprintable names least expected from anybody of good breeding, taste and cultural upbringing.

However, it is in Kawu’s role as an "assassin", a toga many back page columnists wear these days given their delusive arrogation to themselves an unexamined and sometimes an unexaminable high moral ground that his true intentions became manifest. Operating out of a priscriptivist mindset that subsists on an esoteric and increasingly very narrow, and fanatically promoted ideological world view that is intolerant of contrary viewpoint and perspective and which is contradistinctionally placed to the dynamism, complexity and dialectics that shape individuals and social processes, Kawu launched, pontifex maximus - like, into an analysis of El-Rufai’s character and his psychological motivations and mindsets with an unbecoming, repugnant and lamentable diction. In his words: "a small man, who excessively needed to do ‘giant’ things; El-Rufai has a deep-seated inferiority complex… which he could not exorcise…" and "there must have been some very deeply gained trauma from his early life which continued to seep to the surface in so many ways and were easily discernable to whoever can do a basic psychological portrait of the man".

Where does one begin in interrogating this pseudo-scientific and quasi-intellectual hodge wash that is peddled as a sound psychological description of a man and his motives? It is intolerable that the nation’s reading public is not only being held hostage to the mindless diatribe and self-serving cant by newspaper columnists whose brand of tyranny will make Bokassa look like a non-starter, especially on public issues, but that they have also become harsh judges of men in a loutish and uncivilized manner.

I have searched diligently in the article about El-Rufai’s land grab and found none. What I encountered is a man who is plainly guilty by association going by the repeated use of the terms "kleptomaniac" and "despotic" in describing Ex-President Obasanjo, El-Rufai’s erstwhile boss. As the Senate probe goes on, and whether paid writers like Kawu likes it or not, the fact they cannot wish away is that El-Rufai allocated over 27,000 plots of land during his tenure as Minister, superintended over the sale of Federal Government properties over 90% of which was purchased by Civil Servants, freed the city from the monstrous spectre of illegal structures, shanty dwellings, emerging ghettos and Okada menace, and put in place a functional mass transit scheme that is growing in strength by the day.

Kawu’s unconscionable and despicable use of language in describing such a performer with proven track records, rather than attenuate his high moral and social standing will indeed help in consolidating his iconic stature as the hero of our capital city.

Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim lives at House 82, Road 16, Gwarinpa Housing Estate, Abuja.