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YAKUBU KURFI
N ot much is known about Kurfi, who loves to stay out of the limelight and has been keeping a low profile since he left government in 2010. He studied economics at Wagner College, New York, US. Kurfi, who is from Katsina state just like Buhari and former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, became commissioner for finance when Yar’Adua was elected governor of Katsina in 1999. He was later appointed managing director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria by President Olusegun Obasanjo. When Yar’Adua was elected president in 2007, he appointed Kurfi deputy chief of staff and chief economic adviser. He was believed to be the most powerful political appointee in Yar’Adua’s government.

Kurfi hardly spoke to the media or addressed allegations, some of which accused him of stalling the power projects initiated by Obasanjo because he wanted to bring in new contractors. He was also accused of stalling the $8.3 billion railway modernisation contract agreed with China Civil Engineering and Construction Company by Obasanjo in 2006, allegedly because he wanted to bring in his own contractors. The delay in renewing or renegotiating the oil mining licences of Shell and other IOCs in 2009 was also attributed to him, allegedly because he had found some Chinese partners who were offering Nigeria an advance payment of $60billion for the oil blocks. Kurfi never responded to any of these allegations.

In his new book, “My Watch”, Obasanjo described Kurfi as a member of the Yar’Adua ‘cabal’ who wanted to settle personal scores with him. The former president wrote: “At first, it was the same men now in the corridors of power, like Tanimu Yakubu Kurfi and Baba Kingibe, who suddenly remembered ‘the evil’ I had done them in the past, which they wanted to avenge. For Tanimu, whom I appointed Managing Director of the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria on the recommendation of then Governor Umaru Yar’Adua, my offence was that I did not appoint him to run and handle the Yar’Adua Presidential Campaign and manage the campaign fund. From what I had seen of his performance at the Federal Mortgage Bank, I would not have made or allowed such an appointment.”

Nasir el-Rufai, former minister and now APC governorship candidate in Kaduna state, commented sparsely on Kurfi in an essay titled “Yar’Adua: Great Expectation, Disappointing Outcome” which he wrote in May 2009 as part of his course requirements at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he did a master’s programme in public policy. He described Kurfi as one of the Katsina professionals who made money from the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under Buhari.

El-Rufai wrote: “A group of young professionals of Katsina State origin, who had made money from the Petroleum Special Trust Fund (PTF) program under the supervision of General Muhammadu Buhari, came to the rescue [to finance Yar’Adua’s governorship bid in 1999]. Their leader was Tanimu Yakubu, an Economics graduate of Wagner College, New York, and included Dr. Aminu Safana and Ibrahim Shema [current governor of Katsina]. Nura Khalil was part of the group but decamped to the APP. Other ‘businessmen’ like Dahiru Mangal and Ahmadi Kurfi (both alleged to be professional smugglers) contributed financially to the Yar’Adua for Governor Campaign in 1998-99.”

Kurfi, whom many insiders expect to be Buhari’s key man if he is elected president, was nominated into the policy directorate by the former head of state, TheCable understands.