The search for a new Chief of Staff to the Nigerian president must, naturally, be on and might even have been decided by the time this piece is out since it would have become clear to the camp long before he dies that Kyari was unlikely to survive the virus in the context of his infection.
It is never clear if the position of COS was originally designed to be whatever it seems to have become today except that, in a country such as Nigeria where the president decides everything, it was bound to become a repeater station of power. That is what it has, indeed, become as to define democracy since 1999. Power accretes and power of access to the real man of unconstrained power accretes at a faster rate.
A much younger General Abdullahi Mohammed either as Military Governor of the old Benue Plateau State or as Head of the disbanded NSO
Under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who inaugurated the civilianization of power in 1999, the job was given not to a technocrat but a retired General. The key consideration was for someone who had come to terms with the multiple manifestations of the Obasanjo persona and knew how to manage it. And whose loyalty was guaranteed by the ranking order more than anything else but as well as previous relationship. General Abdullahi Mohammed was thus in a position to steady the ship and allow Obasanjo to exercise power with caution and national balance in line with the will of the coalition of ‘shareholders’ symbolised by General Danjuma; IBB/Aliyu Gusau and so on.
In other words, nobody needed to look beyond the COS to understand the character and content, the ideological orientation and capacity of the C-in-C and his readiness to govern in tandem with the sense of Nigeria that that generation of military officers had and probably still have.
General Mohammed could thus whip appointees into line, having himself made critical input to their appointment within the logic of governance weaned, at least, notionally, of ethno-religious chauvinism and which Obasanjo sought to personify as a unifier and someone with a sense of legacy. As agile and mentally alert as Obasanjo, he lacked patience with the nitty-gritty of operational governance, a gap which the COS filled, vetting appointments once the larger political, geopolitical and technocratic decisions have been agreed. The COS then became the person who took many decisions first before notifying the C-in-C without that being seen as subversion. Subversion is always in the eye of the beholder.
So, everything worked well and Obasanjo could thus go on with his missionist eye on history, the idea that he must have survived Abacha only because God wanted him to create a new Nigeria, ‘take it from desolation to prosperity’ as a Villa insider at the time put it. That was part of why he assembled available brains from the four corners of the country, from public and private sectors, locally and from the Diaspora but in a problematic manner in that he de-rooted himself by hanging the substance of the great dream on people who had no audience beyond the newspaper readers in big cities. The rest, as they say, is now history.
The clumsiness that attended his exit from power and brought the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to that office also affected or re-shaped the Obasanjo-Abdullahi Mohammed trajectory of the COS as the anchorman of power who, when at work, the C-in-C could then pursue greater objectives. Late President Yar’Adua changed the context and designation of the COS. Some people believe he did so because he nurtured other centers of palace powers outside the grip of one man or one source. This created some competition for access and relevance between a Principal Private Secretary, David Edebiri, who was rightly or wrongly seen as former Delta State governor, James Ibori’s hatchet man and Yakubu Tanimu who had emerged in public consciousness as a tried, tested and trusted Yar’Adua operative right from Katsina where he had occupied several political offices under Yar’Adua.
With Babagana Kingibe as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation under Yar’Adua and with his richer network and personal standing, the COS was eclipsed. Death of Yar’Adua prevented the experiment from running its full course.
When Dr. Goodluck Jonathan took over, the COS office suffered further degradation in stature. Not a few of people who were in the State House then felt that Goodluck Jonathan’s Government lacked direction and that the directionless-ness reflected most in the COS, Mike Ogiadome whom Jonathan had reportedly known when they both were deputy governors in their respective states. So, unlike the Obasanjo era when recruitment into the office was based on such connection but also the unique selling point of refracting the C-in-C and the coalition in power,
Ogiadome refracted no major tendency in Nigerian politics at the time. Whether the appointment of Brigadier-General Oladeinde Arogbofa obviously as a concession to one of the ‘shareholders’ in the Jonathan presidency changed this or not is a matter of opinion.
Some faces @ late Abba Kyari’s burial earlier today
With education in two of the top ten UK universities and a diverse professional background – journalism, banking, law and the corporate world, Abba Kyari was a material good fit for the COS position any day. How he became a controversy is thus the puzzle.
The big expectation in town after Buhari’s victory in 2015 was that the role would go to an uninhibited and truly independent enforcer among his inner circle like Hameed Ali. Hameed Ali is described in some quarters as “mindlessly tough and detached” and whose origin as minority Northern tribe positioned him as the ultimate balancer in the Buhari camp. It is not that some people did not worry about Hameed’s reported lack of basic humanity and compassion when he is pursuing goals he considers to be the right one but even his worst critics reckoned with him then as more incorruptible and not belonging to any major ethnic or religious tendency might have compensated for his relative lack of experience. But he didn’t get the job.
Another name who failed to get the job was Adamu Adamu although he wasn’t such a big name for that because the rating for him was “Buhari’s perfect Principal Private Secretary”. He ended up as the Education Minister. There were other speculations then.
Subsequently, President Buhari’s medical entanglement and long absence from office vis-avis camp agenda of power brought more and more public exposure and censure for the COS who had become the most visible face of camp power. The social narrowness of the camp worsened the situation for him. Unlike the Obasanjo regime in 1999 which was a coalition of fractions, the Buhari regime since 2015 is a lone camp. Any face of it is bound to have public censure awaiting it because it has few defenders.
The key question is whether Buhari will use the unfortunate loss of Abba Kyari to widen the social base of the camp which means both the Buhari camp and Nigeria are in in search of a new COS to the president. And who would they find?
In a very diffuse world, it is a difficult question to answer. The nominee of someone somewhere in the UK or in the Cambridge or Warwick University network could get the job just as an elderly folk somewhere in Nigeria could also get it. The big hypothesis right now is that Mallam Mamman Daura will decide who gets it, and loyalty would count more than anything else. Assuming that Mamman Daura will decide, how would he go about it?
Educational background is likely to count in his decision. Himself and Mahmud Tukur, the other Philosopher-king of the camp are well educated in the Western sense and revel in the capacity that modern education endows the possessor. This might have worked against Hammed Ali in 2015. This factor of systematically educated person is likely to be decisive given the age of the president and the associated mental and physical state thereto.
Camp grooming would be the next consideration. It is unlikely they will bring in just anyone who doesn’t understand where they stand. Given the high degree of their mystification in the popular press, they are sure to go for someone who may not appreciate their position but not ignorance of where that camp stands among other class fractions and tendencies in the Nigerian political economy. Might Mohammed Haruna be waiting in the wing on this score? He satisfies all their criteria except Fulani or Kanuri identity. He is well educated, networked in his own way, schooled in the tendential impulse of the camp especially as a member of the league of former MD of the now dead New Nigerian Newspapers. Currently in INEC, he can easily be pulled out although what is not clear is whether he can work with Buhari at personal level.
Or is this when to dilute the regional character of the regime with an insider-outsider, either in terms of religion or region? Outside of consideration for religious/regional diversity, might they be thinking of an APC ideologue? MD, (Mamman Daura) will not allow Kaduna governor, Nasir el-Rufai, a taste of it, partly because he is not a camp follower and he would alienate the government more anyway with an embarrassing involvement in the Obasanjo privatisation the camp doesn’t accept.
The plausible return of Kingibe in a story of two ‘sai Baba’
Otherwise, would Mamman Daura emerge to fill a vacuum he alone is said to understand? That is most unlikely. But, would MD sit by and allow an intrepid, ‘disloyal’ Hammed Ali take over? Or, recommend Babagana Kingibe who satisfies crucial criteria of deep Western education, network and technocratic expertise? Would Kingibe reify the unfortunate but golden opportunity Providence is believed to have opened for him in terms of appointment of a COS that will re-establish a new and more consensual image for the Buhari factor in Nigerian politics?
It would not be surprising if the president misses the opening again, going by the content of the tribute to Abba Kyari. It is natural for him to pay tribute to his departed Chief of Staff and loyal, camp ideologue for many years. He would have presented the world with a terrifying image of himself if he didn’t do so. But the absolutely well written tribute, (obviously by Mallam Mamman Daura or Mahmud Tukur) could do without the heavy emphasis on the defining but the very attributes the public take exception to about the ruling camp, (or cabal for those for whom that concept performs a cathartic function).
When the president writes that “In political life, Abba never sought elective office for himself. Rather, he set himself against the view and conduct of two generations of Nigeria’s political establishment – who saw corruption as an entitlement and its practice a byproduct of possessing political office”, he is confirming his and camp self-understanding as national prefects out to cleanse Nigeria of rottenness, the view that drives the camp and makes it difficult for them to build hegemony or rule by consent. Yet, hegemony is required to move the nation anywhere.
The view of Abba Kyari having no need nor seeking “the cheap gratification of the crowd” is the source of the charge of sadism thrown at Buhari as a person and the government he leads and such ought to worry any ruling camp because power is, first and foremost, relational and transient and is, contrary to what so-called Realists say, a moral burden.
Somebody who has no regard or who saw “nothing to be found in popular adulation” can actually be called a dictator because finding satisfaction “only from the improvement of the governance of this great country” is a phrase capable of a million of interpretations. But politics is still the art of the possible and securing popular consensus is very vital if not for enhancing national unity then for the practical reason that no less stellar intellectual and Cambridge trained Sociologist, Ibrahim Tahir has said.
Said Tahir in a 2006 interview, “Let me begin by asking you the question: who will convince me or you or President Obasanjo himself for that matter that the next President of Nigeria and his security managers and Defence operators will have comfortable sleep with untold number of young people with hundreds of millions of naira stashed away. …So, transition to the next President with so much money stolen into private hands means that you have to ask again if the Nigerian state has a chance of survival”.
Although Dr Ibrahim Tahir was addressing his friend Obasanjo, what he said applies to every Nigerian president ever since then. State survival is at stake and any self righteousness that doesn’t take that into consideration can become problematic.
There is another sense in which the president should just have restricted the tribute to extolling the departed as a well educated and skillful player and forget about Kyari being such an ennobled fellow. By getting into that, he has allowed himself to be drawn into a meaningless debate about who Abba Kyari was. It is useless question without an answer because who anybody is or was is a question of who is speaking. Abba Kyari to his mother would thus be different from the Abba Kyari that Buhari knew or to the journalists who worked under him at the defunct Democrat or his banker colleagues. His wife would have a different view of him just as each of his children would. This is not to talk of those who were his school mates at Warwick and Cambridge and the Nigerians who knew him as distinct from those who didn’t know him and, of course, those who were politically opposed to him. So, without exception, no one has a core of personality because the self is never such a coherent whole. To that extent, no one, including the late Abba Kyari, would seriously say that s/he knows him or herself. We all exclaim ‘myself’ in the delusion that we know ourselves. If we know ourselves, how come we end up surprising the world now and then by turning out to be worse or actually better than we were previously imagined to be? What anyone is remains in the realm of contingency.
Perhaps, the sense of loss in the camp at the demise of their leading intellectual and technocrat permits the manifesto embodied in the tribute but let’s hope that as they get on with the search for a successor, they will be guided by a wider horizon of reasoning.
