Storm Over Gambari’s Appointment As Buhari’s CoS, Nigerians Worry Over His Character

By Adesina Soyooye &  Akinwale Kasali

Finally, the guess work and lobbying are over. President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday unveiled Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari as his Chief of Staff.

Gambari is a scholar, a diplomat, an economist, an administrator, and more.

He is also Prince of the Ilorin Royal Home.

When the news of the appointment broke on Tuesday, it was shrouded in secrecy. The Presidency refused to confirm or deny it. But the Social Media and the Emir of Ilorin, His Royal Highness Sulu Gambari, stole the thunder from them. Emir Gambari, excited that his brother was chosen for the coveted office, wrote a thank you letter to President Buhari which leaked. That was all the reconfirmation the media needed.

When he was finally unveiled, it became old news.

In making the appointment, Buhari not only shattered the dreams of many, he dashed hopes. In all the permutations, Gambari’s name never surfaced. The frontrunner, or so everybody thought, was Babagana Kingibe, himself, also an accomplished diplomat. But Buhari went back to his 1984 days, when he was Head of State, and picked his then Minister for External Affairs, who had since grown in leaps and bounds.

A Buhari adherent says Gambari was picked, for, among other attributes, the President’s penchant for rewarding loyalty, and never forgets a good turn. He recalled that Buhari appointed both Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, The Hon Justice Nsofor, and the High Commissioner to Britain, The Hon. Justice Oguntade, because, at one time or the other, both gave dissenting judgements, in his favour, during his long journey to the Presidency.

Gambari’s appointment has been greeted by commendations and condemnations like claps of thunder. Aside from his brother, the Emir who praised his appointment to high heavens, many others, including serving and ex-governors have been falling over themselves congralating him, and commending the President for a brilliant choice. Sources say the diplomatic community is also comfortable with Gambari’s appointment.

But it has not all been praises. Not a few think the President couldn’t have made a worse choice. They are not comfortable with his age, either. He is 75 years. They also insist that he is always working for dictators, seeing nothing wrong in their dictatorships, and polishing their images.

Stung by Gambari’s appointment, Femi Fani-Kayode fumed: “With the appointment of Gambari as the President’s Chief of Staff, for the first time in our history, we have a Fulani President and a Fulani Chief of Staff both serving a Fulani Government with a Fulani agenda. To make matters worse,  Gambari is a hardliner. And he was Buhari’s  Foreign Affairs Minister when the later was Head of State.

“His only interest throughout his distinguished  career as a  career diplomat was to do nothing but  further, and protect the interest and hegemonic agenda of the Caliphate. We welcome him, and we will engage him.”

Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoleye Sowore, quipped that  Gambari had served and defended dictatorship in Nigeria, and that nothing better should be expected from him.

Public commentator and academic,  Farooq Kperogi writes of him: ” He defended IBB’s ruinous invalidation of the June 12 Presidential election, justified Abacha’s heart-rending judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, and, according to the New York Times of October 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.

A number of other criticisms has been made public. But the most stinging and damaging reaction to  Gambari’s appointment came from Ambassador Dapo Fafowora who told a heart-rending bitter,

personal experience with Gambari.

He said Buhari’s new CoS paid him back his good to him with evil, and stabbed him at the back.

Entitled:  My Bitter Experience With Buhari’s New Chief of Staff, Fafowora wrote:

“I know him quite well. I was the one who, in 1981, brought him to the UN at his request as a member of the Nigerian delegation.

“He was then a senior lecturer at the ABU. In fact, the late Prof Audu, who was then Foreign Minister actually advised me against inviting him to the UN. But he had strong academic credentials which impressed me. He had obtained his first degree in political science from the LSE, and a doctorate from Colombia University in New York. We were looking for strong delegates to the UN General Assembly and I considered him the kind of delegates we were looking for.

“So I invited him as one of our delegates to the UN General Assembly. He was at the UN in New York with me. I gave him and his wife my city apartment which I was not using free for 3 months plus a car. I liked him and I was not seeking any favours from him.

“After 3 months he returned home and sent me a note thanking me for giving him the first opportunity to visit the UN as a delegate and giving him his first experience at multilateral diplomacy.

“However, he sent President Shagari a secret and private note that while he was at the UN he observed that I had not been attending the meeting of Islamic states at the UN. President Shagari sent the note to Prof Audu who forwarded it to me in New York. He didn’t even ask me for any comments on Gambari’s secret memo as Prof Audu fully understood that Nigeria had traditionally not been attending meetings of the Islamic states as we were not then a member of the Group.

“Gambari asked for a private meeting with President Shagari which Prof Audu advised against. I was shocked that someone I had helped so much turned round to betray me so blatantly. I did not tell him I knew about the secret letter he had sent to the UN. When Shagari was overthrown by Buhari, Gambari became Foreign Minister. When career ambassadors were being suddenly retired I was at first not on the list.

“But Gambari, now FM and Rafindadi, the head of the NSO who had worked under me in London, and was now head of the NSO worked together to secure my retirement. In fact, when I called him from New York to confirm from him news about my retirement he first denied it.

Thereafter, he no longer took my calls.

“In fact, I remained at my post in New York for another 3 months during which the MFA tried to reverse the decision to retire me. I had done absolutely nothing wrong in my entire career in the diplomatic service and only got into trouble for helping a young academic who turned against me to fulfil his own personal ambition.

“Since then, he and I have only met twice in very difficult circumstances. First at a dinner by a mutual friend in New York several years after my retirement. He could barely look directly at me. He was clearly embarrassed.

“Then when Buhari won the elections in 2015 I headed a team that was set up to prepare a paper for him on our Foreign Policy. Subsequently, Alhaji Joda asked him to join the team.

“Last year, he suddenly called me to ask if I would kindly represent him at a public lecture he had agreed to chair. I told him I could not snd that he should look for someone younger. He immediately hung up on me.

“Now, he may be the kind of person Buhari is looking for to succeed Abba Kyari as COS. They are very much alike but Gambari is more subtle and even more dangerous and will substitute the national interests for his own personal interests. I have no doubt about that.

“What I have written in this long piece is just some of my personal experience and encounter with him. Everything I have written here is in my memoirs ‘Lest I Forget’ which he has seen and read. It is nothing new.

“But I think it important that the character of our top govt officials should be revealed and not covered up. We have, as a nation, paid dearly for supporting appointments to high office that are often detrimental to our nation. Enough is enough and this has to stop.”

Gambari is the second Ilorin son to be appointed  Chief of Staff. The first was the urbane Major General Abdullahi Mohammed, Rtd, who was President Olusegun Obasanjo’s CoS.

Now, Abba Kyari’s passing has offered another Ilorin son an opportunity. It is expected that Gambari would bring polish and his wealth of experience in many fields to beat in his new assignment.