Newly Appointed CoS, Gambari Won’t Be As Powerful As Abba Kyari

Nigerian Ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, on Tuesday appointed Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari as his new chief of staff.

The former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations for the Department of Political Affairs, who is an indigene of Kwara State, was appointed to replace the late Abba Kyari on Tuesday, May 12.

Gambari, 75, is currently the Special Adviser on the International Compact with Iraq and Other Issues for the Secretary-General of the United Nations and was the Minister of External Affairs between 1984 and 1985 before he became the chairperson of the African Union Commission as Joint African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur effective in January 2010.

On March 4, 2013, Ibrahim Gambari was appointed the pioneer Chancellor of the Kwara State University, the ceremonial head that presides over convictions to award degrees and also supports the vision of the institution.

Reacting, a popular newspaper columnist, Farooq Kperogi in a twitter thread, on Wednesday, described Gambari, as a “Presidential Babysitter” Who Won’t be as Powerful as the former CoS, Abba Kyari, who died of COVID-19 complications.

Kperogi, however said that on paper, Gambari’s choice is so far the regime’s most luminous appointment.

“Gambari is undoubtedly one of Nigeria’s most credentialed,” he said.

See thread below:

Ibrahim Agboola Gambari: A Presidential Babysitter Who Won’t be as Powerful as Abba Kyari-THREAD

On paper, Prof 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

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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,

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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.

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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,

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020

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).

— Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D (@farooqkperogi) May 13, 2020