El-Rufai And The Abachas: The Unsavory Story

By Emmanuel Aziken

The recent demolition of the onetime prestigious Durbar Hotel, Kaduna reportedly owned by the Abacha family has again brought to light the uneasy relationship between the Abacha family and Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.

Durbar Hotel, until it was bought over by the Abachas, was generally regarded as one of the most prestigious hotels in Northern Nigeria. It was recently demolished by Governor El-Rufai upon claims that the Abachas had not paid ground rent on the property for 19 years.

In that period the property had laid fallow with no activity following litigations over the propriety of the transactions with which the Abachas took over the hotel.

The government had lost the case both at the high court and the Court of Appeal. Final arbitration was being awaited at the Supreme Court before the bulldozers moved in.

However, Governor El-Rufai was never known to be one of the praise singers of Abacha despite the fact that his present political mentor, Muhammadu Buhari served the Abacha government.

El-Rufai, one of the brightest quantity surveyors to have come out from the North was said to have seriously disputed the principle behind the operations of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, PTF as operated by the Abacha government.

The blueprint for the PTF was reportedly produced by Ahmad Sahijo, reportedly an in-law of Buhari whose company, Afri-Projects Consortium, APC became the central clearinghouse for all operations of the PTF which had Buhari as executive chairman.

Besides Sahijo, another prominent figure behind APC was Amina Mohammed, the incumbent Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former minister in the Buhari government.

Based on his principled stance, and at a time when several Nigerians especially educated Northerners were making millions from the PTF, El-Rufai reportedly refused to bid for PTF jobs despite operating a successful quantity surveying practice in Kaduna.

It was not until Abacha died that he started operating in the background as an adviser to the Abubakar Abdulsalami government on privatisaiton following his schooling in that respect by his mentor, the late Hamzat Zayaad. Zayaad was the first chairman of the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisaiton, TCPC.

It was from there that a top shot in the Abdulsalami government handed him over as an asset to Olusegun Obasanjo to help pursue the privatization agenda of the incoming government.

It was perhaps in that time that he got first hand information of the scheme operated by the Abacha government to acquire Durbar Hotel.

So far no one has been able to use legal means to retrieve what Abacha appropriated, that is until El-Rufai’s bulldozers moved in last month to level the hotel and again bring to fore the unsavory story between him and the Abachas.

Send Us A Press Statement Advertise With Us Contact Us

 And For More Nigerian News Visit GWG.NG