by Rachel Ogbu

The new book from former FCT minister, Nasir el-Rufai titled; ‘The Accidental Public Servant’ which highlights mistakes of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime has been criticised by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar regarding it as fiction and not fact.

According to reports, Abubakar dismissed the book out rightly describing it as a book used for self-glorification at the expense of truth and called it a collection of “fiction, half-truths, exaggeration and reflection of selective memory”.

Although, El-Rufai is yet to officially react to the criticisms he re-tweeted a comment on February 6 that read: “I’m not a perfect person, I make a lot of mistakes but still, I love those people who stay with me after knowing how I really am.”

Abubakar had some revelations of his own directed to el-Rufai’s stating that the former FCT Minister seems to have forgotten his remarks at the Senate Public Hearing on BPE, held between August 8 and 13, 2011. That Adhoc committee was headed by Senator Ahmed Lawan. El-Rufai had announced that he had special connection with former President Obasanjo, which gave him direct access and the option to bypass the Council on Privatisation, headed by Atiku at the time in order to get the approval of the President.

In his book El-Rufai had claimed that was close to resigning as the former Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises because of alleged persistent pressure and interference by Abubakar.

Abubakar expressed disbelief on the claims and wondered how El-Rufai could reconcile his threat of resignation with the accounts he told the Senate about the latitude of freedom he enjoyed at BPE because of his closeness to former President Obasanjo.

The Punch reports:

On the claim by el-Rufai that former President Obasanjo went on bended knees before him to seek his cooperation for second term bid in 2003, Atiku dismissed the claim as a figment of el-Rufai’s wild imagination.

He said such a claim lacked any credibility because Atiku and Obasanjo were together behind closed doors, and that only the duo knew what actually transpired between them.

The statement also added that for a man like el-Rufai, who has a “notorious reputation for disparaging religions and their icons, the attack on Atiku was the least surprising”.

He noted that if he could go to such an irreverent extent to disparage religious icons, who is an ordinary mortal, like Atiku Abubakar, not to be disparaged by el-Rufai?

But in his reaction, El-Rufai advised Atiku and his team to read the book before passing judgment.

The former minister said, in an email signed by his spokesperson, Mr. Muyiwa Adekeye, that, “The Atiku team should read the book properly and respond to the detailed facts.

“For instance, their man should tell what happened with the NITEL GSM contract that Motorola lost to Ericsson, despite the American company submitting the lowest bid.”