Buhari dismisses claims of cabals controlling his regime

Nigerian Ruler, Muhammadu Buhari has downplayed the claims that certain individuals among his aides and relatives, often called “cabals,” have an influence on his regime.

“I was the one who went round the country on campaigns, and I was the one voted into office as President, twice. No one else did, and no one else took the oath of office, and can exercise the powers of a President,” Mr Buhari said when he fielded questions in an exclusive interview with a national daily.

Many Nigerians, prominent among whom is the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, have claimed that there is a ‘cabal,’ whose influence on the decisions taken by Mr Buhari and the regime, is immense.

Mrs Buhari, at several instances, had accused these people of controlling her husband at the expense of Nigerians, who entrusted Mr Buhari with their mandate.

Those routinely fingered as members of the cabal include the president’s relative, Mamman Daura; his associate, Isa Funtua; and his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.

Recently too, Mrs Buhari asked an aide to the president, Garba Shehu, to resign or be relieved of his position after she accused Mr Shehu of receiving instructions from the said cabals much to the detriment of her husband and the first family.

Mr Shehu had also admitted the existence of cabal within the inner cycle of the presidency. He maintained that they are not “hungry people”; rather, they are “respectable people who deserve respect because they have achieved a lot.”

Unlike Mr Shehu, however, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, described the existence of a group of people called cabal as “myth.”