The Accidental Public Servant

A detailed firsthand account of failed leadership and corruption in the Nigerian government.

The most populous nation on the continent, Nigeria is known as the Giant of Africa. But despite its oil reserves and other natural resources, its economy has been more of a dwarf. “We are...the disappointment of Africa,” laments El-Rufai in his stimulating but somewhat heavy-going account of eight years as a minister in Nigeria’s government (1999–2007), serving in the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. “I have just one motive in mind—to tell the story of my public service years to prepare the younger generation for the sorts of challenges they may face,” he says. The son of a bureaucrat, the author built a successful career as a quantity surveyor on construction projects. After “a series of accidents,” he was appointed to the government agency responsible for privatizing Nigeria’s public enterprises. In some of the book’s most compelling passages, he recalls encounters with the country’s endemic corruption and graft, including bid-rigging and kickback schemes. “I am here voluntarily to work, not to collect bribes,” he tells a deputy director of the privatization agency after being offered a “gift” of $250,000. Public servants in Nigeria, according to El-Rufai, have two choices—“to join the dysfunctional and corrupt system” or “to want to change the system for the better in a way that benefits the many rather than the few.” In 2003, El-Rufai got the high-profile job of minister for the federal capital territory of Abuja after refusing to pay bribes to get his confirmation through the Nigerian Senate. Instructed by Obasanjo to “clean up this city and make it work,” he presided over a real estate boom, but by the end of the president’s second term, he had antagonized other members of the political elite and, fearing for his life, went into exile in the United States. El-Rufai, preoccupied with bureaucratic minutiae of interest only to policy wonks, doesn’t bring Nigeria, its people and its culture alive. But in highlighting the failures of its political leadership, he has performed another public service.

The author’s eight years in government provide him with valuable insights into Nigeria’s “dysfunctional” political system.