President Muhammadu
Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, has been named as the architect of
the president’s controversial letter to the National Assembly informing
legislators that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was to be the
“coordinator” of government activities during Mr. Buhari’s latest trip
to Britain to undergo urgent medical care.
The phrasing of the
letter, a departure from President Buhari’s previous ones where Mr.
Osinbajo was explicitly named “Acting President,” has generated
widespread discussion and a measure of political tension within Nigeria.
Several high-ranking
sources at the Presidency confirmed to SaharaReporters that the
decision to use the phrase, “the Vice President will coordinate the
activities of the Government,” instead of expressing what the
Constitution stipulates, that the Vice President becomes “Acting
President” with the transmission of the letter, was singularly taken by
Mr. Kyari.
Our Presidency sources added that they were not even
certain that Mr. Abba Kyari bothered to seek the opinion of the Attorney
General, Abubakar Malami, before drafting the much-discussed memo to
the National Assembly. However, the sources said President Buhari had in
the past insisted that the Attorney General should at all times be
informed about such important constitutional communication between him
and the National Assembly.
One source said Mr. Buhari was irate
on learning about the political fallout from the ill-motivated decision
to alter the usual content of his letter to the National Assembly. “Abba
Kyari has some explanation to make to the President who was completely
taken by surprise,” said one source. The source asserted that the
President signed the letter on Sunday, after a quick glance, with the
understanding that the letter was couched the same way as the previous
letter he signed when he went on an extended medical leave last January.
“I can assure you that he never knew of the ridiculous insertion of the
word ‘coordinating’ in his letter,” said the source.
Another
source accused Mr. Kyari of fomenting moves in the past designed to
cause confusion between the President and his ministers, and between the
Vice President and the President, adding that Mr. Buhari had on several
occasions scolded the Chief of Staff for his mischievous maneuvers.
“Mr. President has often sharply rebuked [Mr. Kyari], insisting that
things must be done properly and constitutionally,” said the source.
But
the source remarked that, after each presidential reprimand, Mr. Kyari
seemed to get even more desperate to sow seeds of discord, to the point
of taking decisions which Mr. Buhari often would confide in associates
he did not recall authorizing. The Nigerian President, who is officially
74 years old, is believed by some to be older and to be plagued by the
usual ravages of old age, including a failing memory.
Our sources
said one occasion when Mr. Buhari confronted his Chief of Staff was
when Mr. Kyari inserted himself as a board member of the Nigeria
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The sources described Mr. Kyari’s
inclusion on the NNPC board as curious and needless, adding that
President Buhari confronted the Chief of Staff on that decision. Mr.
Kyari reportedly insisted that the President had approved the entire
list presented to him as members of the NNPC board. “Everyone at the
Presidency was shocked when that happened because we knew that Mr.
President had never approved the inclusion of Abba Kyari,” one source
insisted.
SaharaReporters
also learned that the Chief of Staff recently sidelined Information
Minister, Lai Mohammed, when Mr. Kyari set aside the minister’s list of
heads of agencies under his ministry and brought his own names. “Since
then, Abba Kyari blocked every attempt by the Information Minister, Lai
Mohammed, to see Mr. President until the release of the Chibok girls
last weekend,” said the source.
One source said he was unclear
why Mr. Kyari orchestrated the change of the second paragraph of the
President’s letter to the National Assembly, but the second source said
the Chief of Staff had always seen some influential members of the
Buhari administration, including the Vice President and some ministers,
as countervailing forces against him, and wanted to phrase the letter to
the National Assembly in a way that degraded the VP’s powers to act
fully during Mr. Buhari’s absence. “Besides VP Osinbajo, Abba Kyari
considers ministers such as Lai Mohammed, Babatunde Fashola, Rotimi
Amaechi, Audu Ogbeh, Hadi Sirika, Malami, and Jumai Alhassan as those he
should cut off from the President,” said our source.
He added that some
ministers, including the Budget & Planning Minister, Senator Udoma
Udo Udoma, who triedto work with Mr. Kyari have become so frustrated by
the Chief of Staff’s notorious tardiness and sloppiness.
Our
sources said Mr. Kyari’s desire to isolate and control Mr. Buhari often
created political problems for the President, with many critics
believing that he approved some of the bizarre moves made by his chief
personal aide. According to our sources, Mr. Kyari’s own sickness, which
necessitates frequent visits to the United Kingdom, compound his
unpopular maneuvers.
They said Mr. Kyari
always ensured that members of his staff enforce the regimen he has
established to deny or limit access to Mr. Buhari by members of the
government he feels he does not, or cannot, control.
During Mr.
Kyari’s trips abroad for medical treatment, a former Secretary to the
Federal Government, Babagana Kingibe, carries out the official duties of
the Chief of Staff.
One of our sources said Mr. Kyari ’s main
goal in using the “coordinator” tag in the President’s letter to the
National Assembly was to retain considerable power and influence around
his office and person even when the President is not around. “He was so
furious in January when the President was away for 50 days because all
the Ministers whose access to Mr. President he had tried to curtail
started getting approvals and access with the Acting President very
promptly,” one source said.
According to the source, Mr. Kyari
was also riled by President Buhari’s public comments commending Vice
President Osinbajo for the way he ran the country during the president’s
prolonged medical stay in the UK.
Mr. Kyari’s critics in the
administration have often accused him of believing himself the real
deputy to President Buhari. “But all he has managed to do is just
staining the otherwise unassailable personal integrity of the
President,” said one critic.
On more than one occasion, according
to critics of Mr. Kyari, he put himself up to assignments that should
have gone to a minister if the President and his deputy were not
available. They cited a recent example of what happened last Sunday when
the 82 Chibok girls were released. Mr. Kyari “took it upon himself to
go and receive the girls without informing the Women Affairs Minister,
Jumai Alhassan, whose ministry is responsible for everything pertaining
to the Chibok girls in the Buhari administration,” a government insider
said.
An official source who attended the reception said Mr.
Kyari sidelined the media team of the President and carried out official
functions meant for the VP and other appointees of Buhari. Regarding
the reception for the freed Chibok girls, our sources disclosed that the
Information Minister and the Women Affairs Minister got wind of the
event, and simply showed up to attend in spite of Mr. Kyari’s
“standoffishness.”
Some administration insiders disclosed that
President Buhari had become aware lately of his Chief of Staff’s
excesses, and had grown disillusioned that Mr. Kyari was sowing
confusion in his team and even seeking to cause an embarrassing rift
between him and the VP with whom he has been cordial and developed
mutual trust and understanding.
Presidency sources disclosed that
President Buhari’s last major announcement on Sunday, just before the
reception of the Chibok girls, to the effect that he was returning to
the UK for medical treatment, was done without Mr. Kyari’s knowledge. In
a similar manner, according insider information, Mr. Buhari’s decision
to suspend Babachir Lawal as the Secretary to the Government of the
Federation and Ayo Oke as Director General of the National Intelligence
Agency (NIA) came as a surprise to Mr. Kyari, who was kept in the dark.
“That
decision [to suspend Mr. Lawal and Mr. Oke] was President Buhari’s most
dramatic demonstration of his disappointment in Abba Kyari and a few
other associates to whom he has entrusted critical assignments,” said
one source at the Presidency.
The same source said there was a
clear sense in the Presidency that “If and when President Buhari
returns, there will be hell to pay for people like Kyari.”
However,
he and a few others at the seat of government in Abuja expressed doubt
that Mr. Buhari would ever regain the soundness of mind and physical
fitness to dispose of Mr. Kyari, who anchors a cabal at the Presidency
that has dictated much of the administration’s widely criticized
“northernization” policies.