Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai cannot be missed in a crowd. You can hardly meet a more self-assured man, a person who values the life of the mind, invests in its cultivation and repeatedly stands out for his application of intellect and logic. He has been described as one of the most educated and able Nigerians in any field, certainly one of the very best to have held public office, and one of the most committed to the public good. Nasir El-Rufai’s talents are strengthened by a tough character anchored on hard work, integrity and resilience.
Nasir El-Rufai was born to Malam Ahmad Rufai, a native of Zaria who was then living in rural Daudawa, 16 February 1960, the year of independence. After completing primary school in Kaduna, his mind was sharpened at Barewa College and further refined at the Ahmadu Bello University where he graduated with first class honours in Quantity Surveying. In 1982, shortly after his return to Kaduna following his NYSC in Abeokuta, he founded El-Rufai & Partners, a foremost Quantity Surveying consultancy firm, and he came into prominence as a leader in his professional field while also investing in the future of young people by teaching part-time in ABU, his alma mater. Not only did he run a successful business, El-Rufai also acquired an MBA and sufficient training in computer science to enable him to become one of the first investors in the Internet Service Provision sector in Nigeria.
The breadth of El-Rufai’s knowledge, his broad mind, the clarity of his analysis and his competence soon brought him to the attention of General Abdulsalam Abubakar, who in 1998 appointed him to the Policy Implementation and Monitoring Committee (PIMCO) which was charged to help manage the transition programme that led to the handover to a democratically elected government in 1999. In that capacity, he interfaced with the World Bank, the IMF and other agencies, and helped draft the legislation that established the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE. The same qualities that had brought him to limelight also impressed President Olusegun Obasanjo who charged him in 1999 to run Nigeria’s privatisation programme as Director-General of the BPE.
Malam Nasir El-Rufai distinguished himself at the BPE, showcasing a clear-headedness, tenacity and courage that persuaded President Obasanjo appoint him in 2003 as the minister of the Federal Capital Territory. He restored Abuja to the dream of its founders, gave Nigeria its first computerised land registry and made it possible for ordinary Nigerians, 27,000 of them, to own land in Abuja once they followed simple, but clear, procedures. Many more were to benefit from his supervision of the sale of government houses following the adoption of the monetisation policy by the Federal Government. El-Rufai became known as the successful manager of difficult tasks, which he handled with ease. He initiated the process of pension reforms that birthed the new contributory pension scheme, led the planning team for a new national identity mechanism and coordinated the bureau of public service reforms. During his service as FCT minister, he invited and provided facilities for the EFCC to set up a unit in his ministry, in a firm demonstration of his commitment to transparency.
After completing a first stint of nine years in public office in 2007, El-Rufai returned to school, completing a law degree and enrolling for a Master’s in Public Administration at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He returned to Nigeria in May 2010 after a period of self-exile, and became active as a vocal public intellectual, maintained a popular weekly column and increased his political involvement. El-Rufai chaired the renewal committee of the CPC, and he was a signatory to the APC’s INEC registration form that confirmed the merger of the five parties that fused into the APC. He was later appointed the interim deputy national secretary of the APC.
On 5 December 2014, Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, OFR, won the party primaries and emerged as the APC candidate for Governor of Kaduna State. He won the 11 April 2015 gubernatorial election and was formally declared governor-elect of Kaduna State on Sunday, 12 April 2015.
During his first term as governor of Kaduna State, he attained many feats in governance reforms, including:
- Attracting more than $500m new investments into Kaduna state and improving its World Bank Doing Business Report ranking in 2018 to Number 1 among the 36 Nigerian States.
- He paid unprecedented attention to human capital development through reforms in Education and Health, including school renovations, a project to upgrade 255 Primary Health Centres and various social intervention programmes.
- Used electronic voting for the conduct of Local Government Elections in Kaduna. Kaduna is the first Nigerian state to do this.
- Was the first to implement Treasury Single Account, mopping up state funds from 470 bank accounts into one account in the CBN.
- Created the Kaduna Geographic Information Service (KADGIS) to establish a digital land registry for the state
- Passed an innovative Mortgage and Foreclosure Law
Malam Nasir El-Rufai was re-elected in March 2019, and his running mate, Dr. Hadiza Balarabe, became the first elected female Deputy Governor in the far north of Nigeria. He appointed women to head six of the 14 ministries in the state. Several youths and women were also named as heads of agencies or key advisers and created a cabinet with people from every part of Nigeria.
In his second term, he launched and implemented the Kaduna Urban Renewal Programme in Kaduna, Kafanchan and Zaria. The Urban Renewal program is the most ambitious and transformative infrastructure investment program to be implemented since the creation of the state. With the implementation of the program, the state created thousands of good paying jobs, renewed/ rebuilt key infrastructure in education, healthcare, and transportation, and sustainably grew the state economy.
Malam El-Rufai was the first prominent politician from the north of Nigeria to declare as far back as in 2019 that the presidency of Nigeria should rotate to the south in 2023. He was foremost among the APC governors from the northern states that delivered on this commitment to national unity at the APC presidential primaries in June 2022. He holds the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), awarded in recognition of his selfless service to nation building and national development.
In February 2023, he led two other state governors to sue the Federal Government of Nigeria at the Supreme Court over the muddled-up implementation of the currency redesign policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria and the associated hardship it caused for millions of Nigerians. The Supreme Court of Nigeria declared the currency swap policy invalid and directed that the old notes would remain legal tender till the end 2023. He completed his tenure as governor of Kaduna State in May 2023.