Re: The Man Abba Kyari, and an Empty Political Brouhaha

I read with so much interest and delight Emmanuel Yaw Benneh’s article on the brouhaha surrounding the appointment and reappointment of the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. Yaw is a consummate and highly respected Ghanaian intellectual. Thus, he enters he joined the conversation from a disinterested and analytically objective perspective. The most […]

I read with so much interest and delight Emmanuel Yaw Benneh’s article on the brouhaha surrounding the appointment and reappointment of the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. Yaw is a consummate and highly respected Ghanaian intellectual. Thus, he enters he joined the conversation from a disinterested and analytically objective perspective. The most fundamentally significant contribution he has brought to the table are: (1) that Abba Kyari, by virtue of his training, intellectual endowments, professional knowledge, administrative skills, and ideological and philosophical vision of Africa, nay, Nigeria, scarcely could the President had made a better choice; (2) Kyari has an indomitable and unwavering loyalty to the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and is ever willing to pay the ultimate price to protect its integrity and moral fibres. Let me briefly comment on these points before proceeding further.

An older friend of mine—and I am not going to disclose his identity because I don’t have his permission to do so—who worked as a journalist in the New Nigerianewspapers in the 1960s/70s once told me in the course of our routine political analysis that the best appointment Muhammadu Buhari has made since ascending the presidential throne in 2015 is the appointment of AbbaKyari as his Chief of Staff. He regaled me with so much amazing detailsof Kyari’s virtue that space and time would not permit to reproduce here. It suffices to say, however, that his submissions are in the same analytical neighbourhood as that of Yaw’s. Let me summarise his take. Kyari, he said, is at home with both Oriental and Western classics; possesses prodigious intellectual talents;a gifted writer;independent minded and with a fertile imagination. Despite all these attributes, Kyari is calm, self-effacing, and full of social grace and charity. What is my take on these testimonial postulations?

Let me make a full disclosure before my take. I don’t know Abba Kyari; neither have I met him nor our paths crossed. But the one inerasable thing I have observed is that the speeches of President Muhammadu Buhari are always intellectually insightful, profoundly deep and contextually reflective of our social conditions and place in the international political economy system. I have also noticed that it is becoming rarer by the day for presidential imaginings and communications to be easily divulged and circulated in the media as was the case in the past. President MuhammaduBuhari’s official engagements and the character of administrative protocols are better organised and managed than as it was previously; this comportment has conferred more dignity and respectability to the presidency. It is my take that all these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the imprint of the Chief’s. These observations, in my view, corroborates the aforementioned opinions. Let us now see beyond Kyari’s personality endowments.

The brouhaha about the appointment and reappointment of Abba Kyari can be analytically situated in multiple conceptual spaces: administrative, cultural, economic, political, psychological, social, and so on. Of all these, I take the political. I muse that 2023 political calculations within the APC family are at the epicentre of the whole contestation. Let me hit the nail on the head straightaway. There is a thinking that if the wings of Abba Kyari are not clipped, urgently and radically so, he may be paired as the vice presidential candidate. The idea is that the presidential pendulum would shift southward and in all likelihood the candidate would be a Christian.  The North-West going by the theory of recencyas encapsulated in the principle of presidential rotationalism would be ruled out. This is the more so that the North-West zone recently produced Vice President. In the event, it is envisaged the Abba Kyari would pull his weight and make a strong showing.

My analysis could be very far from the causation of the brouhaha. But I am using this argumentation as a tropeto give a shout out to Abba Kyari to seriously reflect deeply. Ambassador Baba GanaKingibe won but was not sworn-in, Kyari’s is another chance for the Kanuri.

Atah Pine writes from Makurdi and can be reached on 08035974174