Recently, Mallam Abba Kyari, the Chief of staff to President Muhammadu
Buhari fell to the fatal claws of the rampaging coronavirus pandemic.
His death was to divide the nation into two feuding sides, based on each
other’s perception of the man.
To those opposed to the government, those still hurting from the loss of
the free-eating PDP era, those who have turned enemies of the Nigerian
state since the defeat and rustication of PDP from power in 2015, to
those who have developed fatal hatred for Buhari since 2015, to those
wiho have been handed the short ends of the stick by the regime’s
scorched earth policy against corruption, to even those in APC hunting
for one favour or the other from the Buhari government, Abba Kyari’s
death was a celebration of the exit of their single greatest obstacle.
His death was good riddance to meddlesome bulwark against their own
progress. How his death will flower their own miserable fates, no one
knows or could fathom.
But to those that know Abba Kyari closely, those with whom.he crossed
paths during his colorful and rich life in the private and public
sectors, those that share with him the belief that government is about
service and not about feasting, he was a first class patriot whose
imprimatur rubs handsomely on the laudable achievements of this regime.
Abba Kyari’s trauducers have reigned unfettered throughout the time he
reigned as the President’s Chief of staff. Every manner of evil was
attributed to him. All manners of outlandish and specious tales of
unimaginable and incredulous notoriety were hacked and splattered on
him while he was alive. Every sin was forged and tagged on him. Every
bad fate that befell the country was pinned to him and he became the
ultimate fall guy for not only the regime but for Nigeria in this
period.
So it was natural that these hounds rolled out the drums to celebrate
his demise immediately it was confirmed. They latched on to their
crooked pot of mischief to regurgitate their sordid tales about him.
They danced, they twerked, they twisted in celebrative gyrations to mock
and spit at a man they hardly knew except as a target for their
insidious venom.
But in their early celebration, they never let us know how exactly the
demise of Abba Kyari will suddenly mend their own sorry fates. Will his
death remove Buhari, who certainly is the ultimate target of their evil
bile? Will Buhari replace Abba Kyari with someone that will be pliable
to their rabidly self serving evil desires as it was obvious they hated
Kyari because he stood stoically against their pushing these desires?
Will the death of Kyari grant them access to the keys of the Central
Bank and other soup pots of the country, which he certainly denied them
and which earned him their bile? Will Abba Kyari’s death make Buhari
vulnerable to their death wishes thereby removing the greatest obstacle
to the sustenance of their greesy lives?
But it took little time for the friends of Abba Kyari to open a
floodgate of tributes to a man that was willfully disparaged and
viciously cannibalised by brute corrupt savages, hungrily baying for
blood after being kept off the Commonwealth for a whole six years. One
thing about the flurry of tributes from Kyari’s friends and associates
was that they were generously riddled with facts, provable instances and
credible references where the drivels from his trauducers were laden
with gossip, rumours and incredible lies that fly in the face of
elementary scrutiny.
Where the hounds and brutal savages that feasted on Kyari cooked up
salacious conspiracies from hardly agreeing tittle tattles, those that
penned glowing tributes of the dead man did so with graceful recap of
historical events that speak of a noble and fulfilled patriot that did
so well for his country where the savages lusted for selfish advantages.
Through the cadent tributes those who knew Kyari penned, we saw a
pan-Nigerian patriot painted deliberately black by those who have
elected to be enemies of Nigeria because the state is no longer fixated
on attending to their greedy carnivorous interests. Theirs were laden
with provable facts the vermin never attempted to dispute. What even
gave out the brute savages in their mission to brutalise the spirit of
Kyari was that their evil tales started and ended in the period Kyari
was Chief of Staff and deliberately ignored the period he ran an
eventful public and public sector lives that spanned law, journalism and
banking.
But then, why did Kyari and his friends allow the knaves and savages to
flower and thrive unchallenged for the entire period he was Chief of
Staff to the extent that they nearly damped his spirit in pitch black
after he died? Why did he refuse to challenge the malicious and devilish
tales concocted to tarnish him while alive? Why did Kyari refuse to give
it back to the demons that did everything to paint him black just
because he diligently did his job as gatekeeper to a boss and regime
that chose to blight the debilitating scourge of corruption? Why did he
elect to carry the scourge of suffering the rage of negative tendencies
that held Nigeria down before 2015 without opening his mouth?
These posers gorge deeply into the attitude of the entire Buhari regime
to refrain from joining issues with its opponents and allowing them
unfettered latitude to sow mischief, fake narratives and misinformation
against the regime and its officials. The ill-fated efforts to tar Abba
Kyari, even in death should inform the Buhari regime to shorn its naive
belief that it needn’t state its own stories and put on deliberate
processes to defend itself or promote the achievements of the regime
against the deliberate mischief and nay saying of those who had been
hurting so badly since it came to power in 2015 thereby toppling the
sordid applecart that had serviced their corrupt lives. It is
unthinkable that a serving regime should allow its foes control the
narrative as the Buhari regime has allowed it’s foes. It is unfathomable
that a sitting regime should cede the public space so entirely to the
pranks and idiosyncrasies of the malicious opposition. The end result of
such mistake is the kind of savagery and cannibalism that Abba Kyari
faced even in death.
It is probable that the disposition of the Buhari regime to suffer its
foes in silent ignominy and refrain from dragging for space with the
malice-riden opposition is informed by President Buhari’s own well-known
belief in snubbing and suffering opposition pranks in annoying silence
and allowing posterity to judge him but with a space as Nigeria and with
the preponderance of fickle-minded citizenry we have, this is certainly
proving to be a fatal mistake. It will certainly hurt this regime in the
long run. It nearly hurt Abba Kyari even to the grave Perhaps he was
planning to write a book when he eventually rounds off as COS and might
have planned to offer his explanations for the deliberate
misinformations in such a book. Sadly, such a time will never come. But
thank goodness, he has friends, colleagues, beneficiaries, who have come
to his rescue and rescued his good image, his fond memories and his
patriotic standing from brute and servile savages.
But Abba Kyari’s experience bodes great lesson to the Buhari regime its
officials in their clearly naive resolution to lease the public space to
its enemies and opponents who are bristling with naked vile and mischief
for being kept off their free-feeding feast table and would do anything
to poison the public space against the regime and its officials.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com