To say I was shocked by Abba
Kyari's death would be to tell a lie. Being an asthmatic patient who
routinely had "breathing problems" that necessitated periodic trips to
London hospitals—in addition to being a diabetic who was older than
65—it would have been nothing short of miraculous if he survived
COVID-19.
In spite of who he was, especially the last five years
of his life on earth, as a Muslim, I won't speak ill of him in death.
But I won't write undeserving and deodorizing posthumous extolments of
him, either. That would be as bad as, or even worse than, celebrating
his death.
With Kyari's death, Nigeria is now truly leaderless.
Buhari is practically in the land of the living dead. He's a breathing
mannequin whose only reason for living is to prove he isn't dead in
order to justify the continuity of the rule in his name.
Abba
Kyari ruled the country on Buhari's behalf. In my viral February 22,
2020 column titled, "The Tragedy of the Abba Kyari Surrogate
Presidency," this line appeared: "Sometime in the midpoint of last year,
a northern retired general told me Abba Kyari said in private that
people who vilify him don’t realize that without him Nigeria would be
rudderless and descend into chaos."
Now, he is gone, and the
chaos he talked about would start in the coming days and weeks. Mamman
Daura, Buhari's nephew who introduced Kyari to Buhari, isn't only old
(he is now in his early 80's) he is also now isolated from Buhari thanks
to Kyari.
Babagana Kingibe who has been acting on Kyari's behalf
and who will probably formally replace him, doesn't quite know Buhari
in the same way that Abba Kyari did.
There is a yawning,
potentially disorienting power vacuum in the presidential villa now,
which actually emerged really visibly since Kyari went out of
circulation before his eventual death.
Watch out for Aisha Buhari
to assert herself more aggressively and to work to grab power in the
fashion that Turai Yar'adua did. In fact, she already started this the
moment Kyari took ill.
One of the first things Aisha did was to
cause Jalal Arabi, Permanent Secretary of the State House and Kyari's
dutiful protege, to be redeployed from the Villa.
The remnants of
the cabal will, of course, fight back. But the fight between Aisha and
members of the cabal who are merely Kyari's proteges, would be a fight
in the dark because Buhari who is supposed to intervene is an insentient
being who's barely aware he's alive.
The in-fighting will create
noticeable cracks in the Buhari group that Osinbajo, Tinubu, and other
interest groups would exploit to feather their nests and advance their
interests. In other words, in the coming days and months, expect the
cessation of any pretense to governance and an unprecedentedly factious,
dog-eat-dog, recriminatory fight between competing power blocs.
Written by By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
0 Comments