Abba Kyari, knocking on Heaven’s door

Did you get the memo? Some Nigerians want Allah to keep Malam Abba Kyari on the waiting list to Jannah while they look for reasons why he should not be admitted. Strange isn’t it? Well, don’t be surprised; we are closer to God than Jerusalem, Rome or Mecca residents in our spirituality. We believe we are the apple of God’s eyes. Our competing loudspeakers bear us witness. One ‘man of God’ even went as far as saying that the Holy Spirit deceived him. That could have been blasphemy, but it is not when you consider yourself God’s senior special adviser.

In case you’ve been in seclusion or just waking up from coma; the Abba Kyari we’re talking about was until his death two weeks ago Muhammadu Buhari’s chief of staff. Although an appointee, many regarded him as the most powerful man in Nigeria. Even in death, they want him punished for offences vividly conjured in their minds.

Unlike empty barrelled men, powerful men have a knack for being neither showy nor garrulous. The late Kyari was in that mould. Remembered for his snow-white smile and mostly pictured in the traditional Kanuri hat and white babbar riga.

If you were the most powerful person in Nigeria, popular logic demands that you should use your big office like an elephant in a Chinaware shop. Not for Malam Kyari who did not use his presumed power to end Shekau’s insurgency.

A chief of staff’s job is to stop the president from having to deal with people who want him to separate quarrels between them and their angry spouse. Malam Kyari had friends across tribes and creed in Nigeria; friends that wrote moving tributes of his sterling qualities. Simon Kolawole publisher of The Cable expressed regrets that a maligned Kyari would not suffer anyone to defend him against spurious allegations in the media. He believed he’ll be fine as long as he did not break the confidence of Muhammadu Buhari, his boss.

Since Kolawole is personal friend, let me put on record that he earns my utmost respect as a man of impeccable character and professional integrity. He is not the type to exploit his closeness with the late CoS to get the Ilorin-Kabba road included in the national budget. He’ll think it an abuse of privilege and for that his colleagues have pilloried him rather than confront Kolawole’s lived truth.

Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria’s foreign minister is another Kyari buddy. In a tribute to his departed friend, Onyeama exposed himself to Kyari’s foes. A Muslim Kyari was Onyeama’s best man when the young Igbo Christian married a Yoruba woman from Ondo State. Rare these days, even taboo.

Kyari’s foes have suggested that he introduced Onyeama to Buhari. Onyema’s kinsmen feel betrayed that he did not use Kyari to actualize the Biafra agenda. This is not implausible when you remember that Olusegun Obasanjo signed off Nigeria’s Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon by a stroke of the pen. Failure to exploit personal friendship for tribal opportunism is sacrilege in Nnamdi Kanu’s court. The exiled president of Biafra wears a yarmulke, which makes him a bad enemy to have for anyone hoping to make heaven.

The next testimony breaks my oath. Femi Fani-Kayode’s hatred for the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy is as legendary as his loathing of the touted islamization agenda of the Buhari regime. He never fails to pigeonhole every governance failure in those prisms. Who would have believed that Femi and Kyari were bosom buddies?

Well, Abba Kyari’s death has exposed 40 years of friendship and FFK’s duplicity. Sorry, that’s not my conjecture; rather it is the conclusion of Bolaji Akinyemi, an academic, and woken Hausa-Fulani lackey seeing he was IBB’s foreign minister. Babangida is as Hausa-Fulani as he is Muslim. Akinyemi couldn’t find enough Biblical verses to describe FFK’s presumed treachery of his ‘Christian’ faith and the Yoruba race. He even blamed FFK for Atiku Abubakar’s lose of the last polls to Buhari. Atiku is oligarch and Muslim.

Espionage even in urbane Yoruba land is a mortal sin and Akinyemi who must have been in seclusion when FFK crossed from PDP to APC (as all AGIP – any government in power) politicians would do is unhappy. Akinyemi does not want to share Abba Kyari’s heaven.

From the foregoing, it is evident that nepotism is not bad when used for personal, sectional or religious good. Those who are called to serve, should count loyalty as secondary to using personal office for the enhancement of personal goals or kinship agenda. Do not make friends with those who are unpopular with the world.

While we are waiting for signs that Allah would judge his servants by the testimonies of those who neither knew nor met them, here’s to hope. Hope that in taking Kyari away from those who love him and his detractors, Nigeria experiences progress on oiled wheels.

Hope for finding cure for Covid-19 that claimed Kyari’s life and locked down the world. Hope that a barrel of crude oil, Nigeria’s main export earner goes back to $100 so Nigeria can finance its budget without borrowing from the loathed Chinese. Finally, hope of finding solutions to all the troubles that Abba Kyari was accused of causing.

Until then; from someone who never met spoke or interacted with him, rest in peace Malam Abba Kyari.