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
