The Federal Government’s initial rejection of the application by Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, the controversial former Minister of Federal Capital Territory, for the renewal of his international passport may not have been as dramatic as the 1980 deportation of Alhaji Shugaba Abdurrahman Darman to Chad by the administration of President Shehu Shagari, but the rejection was obviously no less preposterous. It was also obviously such a foolish thing to even contemplate.

            The rejection was preposterous because as a citizen of Nigeria el-Rufa’i was entitled to the country’s international passport no matter how disagreeable the authorities think of his campaign against them from his self-exile abroad. There is, of course, no law that specifically says every Nigerian is entitled to a passport. Our Constitution, however, guarantees freedom of movement in and out of the country and no one can move in or out of his country without passport or something in lieu.

            Of course no law or constitution is absolute. A country can refuse its citizen a passport if he is a certified criminal or even a potential fugitive from the law. El-Rufa’i is neither. His self-exile is essentially political not criminal. The EFCC may have declared him wanted on account of the outcome of a Senate investigation into his management of FCT, an outcome which says he has questions to answer. But neither the Senate nor the EFCC is the court.

            In any case the very fact that the Senate says he has questions to answer is precisely why the authorities should never have refused to renew his passport; for how else could he return to answer the questions without his passport? This is the first reason why the rejection of the application was foolish.

            Second, common sense suggests that the rejection amounted to handing el-Rufa’i a big weapon to help him wage his propaganda war against the Nigerian authorities as intolerant.

            Third, the rejection also suggests that the authorities believe el-Rufa’i is a formidable political opponent whose return can upset the campaign by the ruling PDP to win the next presidential election in 2011, or, to go on ruling Nigerians till Kingdom come, as some of its officials have boasted (Only recently the newspapers were full of stories about the former minister and his friend and fellow self-exile, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, the much feared former excecutive chairman of EFCC, spearheading the formation of a formidable opposition party.)

            El-Rufa’i - and Ribadu who the authorities said should also not have his passport renewed – may be wunderkinds with very powerful connections abroad but politically they are no more than paper tigers. The two may have larger than life images in the way they handled their briefs but any serious observer of the political scene would know that neither can win even a councillorship election where they originally come from.

            The el-Rufa’i passport saga, as we all know by now, started with his application for the renewal of his international passport to Nigeria’s High Commission in the UK where he partly lives in self-exile. As is to be expected, an intelligence officer in the commission notified his superiors at home. These in turn sought the clearance of the National Security Adviser, General (rtd) Sarki Mukhtar. It is not clear whether Mukhtar acted on his own or he merely carried out the orders of his political bosses, but the High Commission eventually received orders not to renew el-Rufai’s application.

            An obviously overzealous senior hierarchy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs then went on to issue instructions to all our foreign missions to blacklist el-Rufa’i and Ribadu, when any rookie diplomat can see that it is impossible to keep such an instruction secret for long.

            Predictably the instruction fell into the “wrong” hands and, even more predictably, it made its way into the media.

            In a recent interview with the Daily Trust, our High Commissioner in the UK, Senator Sarki Tafida, denied el-Rufa’i’s allegation that there was an instruction from Abuja to reject his application. Instead, said Tafida, it was el-Rufa’i who became unduly impatient.

            High Commissioner Tafida is an honourable man but then, as someone once said of diplomats, they are all honourable men sent abroad often to tell, well, lies. With the publication of the correspondences surrounding the affair, it is now obvious that the distinguished former senator did not exactly tell the whole truth about el-Rufa’i’s passport.

            The question then is if denying el-Rufai and Ribadu their international passports was such a preposterous and foolish thing to even contemplate, why did the authorities in Abuja do it only to reverse themselves in the wake of the uproar that the action was bound to provoke?

            The answer goes to the heart of the character of the ruling PDP and shows the extent to which the Nigerian bureaucracy has deteriorated from being a check against the impunity of politicians to being a willing partner in the impunity.

            The initial refusal by the authorities to renew the passports of el-Rufai and Ribadu further exposes the Yaradua’s administration as one that is so easily scared by the slightest threat to its hold on power for the simple reason that its power is not based on the peoples’ consent. Otherwise the authorities in Abuja would have had absolutely nothing to fear from all the propaganda war both el-Rufai and Ribadu have been waging against them abroad.

            As for the bureaucracy, if Ambassador Emmanuel Imohe, the Director General of National Intelligence Agency, who is now left to carry the can for his incongruous role in the whole sordid affair – he was said to have carried out the instructions of his intelligence superiors through a memo to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that in turn instructed the relevant officials in our foreign missions not to issue the two with passports – had been concerned more with his integrity and credibility than with currying favour with his political bosses, he might have properly advised against the decision. This way he might have saved himself from the somewhat ignominious end to his career that he has now suffered.

            Similarly all the senior officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who are now being wise after the fact would have saved themselves their afterthoughts. They would also have saved the authorities from having to swallow their sputum.