₦airaland Forum

As one of the key actors in the All Progressives
Congress (APC) quest to wrestle control of the
Nigerian government from the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP), in his first major interview since the
Saturday, April 11th, gubernatorial elections, El-Rufai
sat down with SaharaReporters to discuss APC’s
plans for Nigeria, his plans for his home-state, and
the role that social media had to play in the 2015
General Elections.

“The polls were clear,” El Rufai says, nodding
convincingly in his Kaduna home on the day after his
gubernatorial election, “Since December 2014, we
knew we would win the presidential elections. All the
numbers that we crunched pointed to it.”
As one of the key actors and strategists behind APC’s
resounding victories in the March 28th, 2015
presidential elections – which saw the emergence of
General Muhammadu Buhari, as Nigeria’s President-
elect, Mallam Nasir El Rufai, a one-time Minister of
the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and the incoming
Governor of Kaduna State, believes that a numbers-
focused campaign led to the APC’s resounding victory
at the national and statewide polls.
“We crunched the numbers once a month -
sometimes a few times a month,” El Rufai said,
referring to how the APC employed political polling to
determine its campaign strategies, “From our
numbers we saw that any of the APC presidential
aspirants would have beaten President Jonathan.”
Of course, to the Governor-elect, who carved out his
significant political following from his days as a
tireless reformer for a Abuja that followed the city’s
original master plan, numbers were important, but it
took a concerted effort and streamlined message to
get the APC’s vision for a new Nigeria across to
Nigerians from all walks of life.
Speaking on some of the expected changes that he
strongly believes that Nigerians will be able to hold
the APC government responsible for, El Rufai notes
that the underlying characteristics of the incoming
APC administration will be to entrench integrity,
restore value for money, ensure government
accountability, and to “terminate ‘badness’ in the
shortest possible time.”
“Of course the ‘goodness’ might take some time –
maybe a few months or years,” he says, “But when
you look at the damage done to the country over the
last 16 years, it will take some time to undo that
damage.”
That is where El Rufai believes that the young people
of Nigeria have a dual role to play. In the first
instance, concerning uneducated and under-
educated youth, the Governor-elect mentions that in
his state in particular, he will be working to ensure
that literacy rates improve – by working to achieve
universal free public education across the board – a
situation he says will lead to development.
In the second instance, the Governor-elect notes the
role of the young people in the electoral process –
especially those on social media that exposed
wrongdoings, undermined the flawed or failed
policies of the outgoing administration, and brought
the world’s attention to Nigeria. This role El-Rufai
says, must now be translated into electoral value to
ensure that young activists, both on and off social
media, who have contributed to the growth of
Nigeria, can get more involved in the decision-
making processes.
Over the past few years, El Rufai has worked on an
initiative called “Young Voices” aimed at promoting
the ideas of Nigeria’s teeming youthful population,
working to ensure that many up and coming Nigerian
leaders in the social and political space have a
launching pad. With the new APC government in
power, he suggests that these sorts of individuals
should have more of a say in the affairs of the
country.
“If you look at the activists on social media, many of
them need to translate their online following to
electoral value,” he says, convinced of the impact of
the Facebook and Twitter generation, “We have to
find a way to get our young people more involved.”
As of the time of this interview, with announcements
gradually pouring in from the various polling units in
his Kaduna State, with 80% of polling stations
reporting, Governor-elect El-Rufai maintained a
convincing lead. In this regard, when asked for what
he would want his and the APC administration in
Nigeria to be remembered for, he smiles and says
unflinchingly: “Make Kaduna what it used to be. Make
Nigeria what it used to be. For everyone.”


http://saharareporters.com/2015/04/14/what-expect-buhari-mallam-nasir-el-rufai

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