Here Comes A Presidential Baby-Sitter By Farooq Kperogi


In paper, Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari’s choice as Buhari’s Chief of Staff is so far the regime’s most luminous appointment. Gambari is undoubtedly one of Nigeria’s most credentialed and globally visible citizens for whom the position of Chief of Staff to the President is actually a positional, even symbolic, downgrade.
Ordinarily, the office of the Chief of Staff to the President is informal, discretionary, and of no consequence. Its inconsequence is underscored by the fact that the constitution does no recognize it and does not require the president to appoint anyone to perform its duties. That was why Umar Musa Yar’adua didn’t have one.

The only reason the position of CoS to the President has become uncharacteristically visible in the last five years is that Buhari is both too cognitively incapacitated and too splendidly incompetent to function as president, so he needs a proxy or, as I pointed out in my April 22 status update, “a babysitter, a political and intellectual babysitter.”

As a military dictator, Tunde Idiagbon was Buhari’s political babysitter from 1983 to 1985. The late Salihijo Ahmad’s Afri-Projects Consortium (APC), was “the sole manager of the PTF projects,” according to Ray Ekpu’s June 5, 2018 article titled, “Petroleum Trust Fraud.” In other words, Buhari couldn’t even manage a government agency as small as the PTF without needing babysitting. Of course, most people know that since 2015 until his death, Abba Kyari was Buhari’s proxy.

Mamman Daura, on whom Buhari is intellectually and emotionally dependent, “created” Abba Kyari for Buhari but Kyari later grew into a Frankenstein that almost devoured his “creator.” Daura wants no repeat of that and sees a potentially dutiful factotum in Gambari who was Buhari’s external affairs minister from 1984 to 1985.

He seems like a person who would do a good job of concealing Buhari’s cognitive and mental infirmities from the public and from government officials, which is what the position of CoS to Buhari has now been reduced to.

Although Gambari has intimidatingly impressive academic and professional credentials, he has no reputation for lofty, high-minded principles, which explains why he would even accept this position, which relegates rather than elevates him.

He defended IBB’s ruinous invalidation of the June 12 presidential election, justified Abacha’s heartrending judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, and, according to the New York Times of Oct. 5, 1997, opposed something as innocuous as a planned renaming of a New York street after the late Kudirat Abiola who was murdered in cold blood by Abacha’s junta, which Gambari served.

He also evinces what I call the overzealousness of the identitarian periphery, by which I mean people who are on the margins of a desired identity tend to go overboard to assert their membership of that identity in order to impress people who are rhetorically constituted as the core of that identity.

Gambari is an Ilorin prince, but his middle name (and the name by which his close family members call him) is Agboola. “Ibrahim” is just for show. Although he traces patrilineal descent from the Fulani, he is culturally (and obviously genetically) Yoruba and doesn’t look anything like a Fulani man, yet Yoruba people won’t accept him as one of them.

He’s on the geographic, symbolic, and cultural fringes of western and northern Nigerian identities, but he identifies as, and indeed is, a northerner. People who know him say he works excessively, if quietly, hard to prove his “northernness” through exaggerated subnationalist gamesmanship of the kind that someone from Kano or Sokoto with a similar educational and experiential exposure as he would find a little too extreme.

People like that are often happy and willing tools of puppeteers who come from the identity they want to be seen as central to but to which they are marginal. My sense is that he won’t be nearly as powerful and as influential as Abba Kyari was for as long as Mamman Daura is alive.

The only silver lining I see is that he probably won’t be as lazy as Abba Kyari was. Kyari was an indolent, self-absorbed presidential gatekeeper who allowed files that required urgent presidential attention to gather dust and who attended only to issues that feathered his nest.
I hope Gambari would at least bring his considerable experience to help lubricate the rusty wheels of governance even while doing the bidding of his benefactor(s).

http://saharareporters.com/2020/05/13/ibrahim-agboola-gambari-presidential-babysitter-who-won%E2%80%99t-be-powerful-abba-kyari-farooq

Another hot blow from Faroouk

.I reiterate. No Nigerian politician has ur interest at heart. Fight for urselves

Na Express APC and buhari carry Nigerians enter so

At this juncture, I admire Buhari for the man he is, not for his style of governance o.

Dude has got nine lives.

The man won't simply die.

We claim he is unaware of things but he is.

Appointing Gambari who worked with him in 1983 really shows Buhari is not Jubril and he got his thinking faculty intact.

I want to be a man like Bihari.

A warlord!

Farooq Kperogi, the man that authoritatively claimed Zakzaky had been killed by the Buhari government.

One of the reasons why Abba Kyari was powerful is that GMB did not employ a PPS. OBJ, Umaru Musa Yar'adua & GEJ all has CoS & PPS.

The summary of the matter is that:
Weak President = Powerful CoS.
Powerful President = Weak CoS.

"Kyari was an indolent, self-absorbed presidential gatekeeper who allowed files that required urgent presidential attention to gather dust and who attended only to issues that feathered his nest.
I hope Gambari would at least bring his considerable experience to help lubricate the rusty wheels of governance even while doing the bidding of his benefacto".....good point of reference.....

Indeed weak president, powerful CoS.

He’s on the geographic, symbolic, and cultural fringes of western and northern Nigerian identities, but he identifies as, and indeed is, a northerner. People who know him say he works excessively, if quietly, hard to prove his “northernness” through exaggerated subnationalist gamesmanship of the kind that someone from Kano or Sokoto with a similar educational and experiential exposure as he would find a little too extreme.

From what I’ve read about him so far, the above description is very apt.

I told people earlier that his family members often call him Agbola but he uses the Ibrahim to appeal to the North.

The writer who is from the North does not see him as Northerner but a Yoruba man, Majority of the Yorubas don't see him as Yoruba but a Northerner.

Anyways, the coming days should be interesting

Not a single Northern APC member have congratulated him yet.

This is going to be very interesting

Una go tlk tire... mouthing no go kill person.
Awon haters crew.

Awol1:
At this juncture, I admire Buhari for the man he is, not for his style of governance o.

Dude has got nine lives.

The man won't simply die.

We claim he is unaware of things but he is.

Appointing Gambari who worked with him in 1983 really shows Buhari is not Jubril and he got his thinking faculty intact.

I want to be a man like Bihari.

A warlord!

The only thing Buhari has lost is his ability to communicate fluently in English language because of his battles with health issues. If you hear him talk in hausa language, you will know that Buhari has more sense on his fingers than some wailers have in the whole of their body.

This one will sit in America and be claiming to know everything that happens in Buhari toilet and Bedroom. He already know that wailers will eat his lies like hot indomie noodles.



I AM DONE TALKING

If the position you are calling baby seater was offered to you, am pretty sure you would have been on the next flight to Nigeria,

Thanks for sharing this Casnova

Following

The late President Yar'Adua didn't have any Chief of Staff.

Karlifate:
One of the reasons why Abba Kyari was powerful is that GMB did not employ a PPS. OBJ, Umaru Musa Yar'adua & GEJ all has CoS & PPS.
The summary of the matter is that:
Weak President = Powerful CoS.
Powerful President = Weak CoS.

oyatz:
The late President Yar'Adua didn't have any Chief of Staff.

You're right.

Many of those accusing someone of babysitting for the President will be eternally glad if they even get close to being diapers-washer in Aso Rock.