Jide Ojo
The above question was posed to me on Monday, April 20, 2020 by the anchor of ‘Politics Today’ on Channels Television, Seun Okinbaloye. Well, I answered in the negative and I would advance my reasons for taking that position shortly. But before then, what really does a Chief of Staff to the President do?
Information garnered from Wikipedia has it that “The White House chief of staff position is the successor to the earlier role of the President’s private secretary. The role was formalised as the assistant to the president in 1946 and acquired its current title in 1961. The current official title is Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff. The chief of staff is a political appointee of the president who does not require Senate confirmation, and who serves at the pleasure of the president. While not a legally required role, all presidents since Harry Truman have appointed chiefs of staff.”
Specific to Nigeria, Wikipedia says “The Chief of Staff to the President is the senior operational member of the Office of the President of Nigeria. The Chief of Staff is the principal channel of communication between the president and the government. They also have responsibility for the official programme and correspondence of the President. Through these roles, the position wields considerable influence. The Chief of Staff is appointed by the President and does not require confirmation from the Nigerian Senate”
When I received the invite to be on the earlier referenced Channels TV programme, I quickly searched the Internet and stumbled on a very incisive article by an eminent Nigerian, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and fellow columnist with this newspaper, Dr. Obadiah Mailafia. In the article published on Monday entitled, “What does a Chief of Staff really do?”, he said, inter alia, “The office of the Chief of Staff is largely an American invention. In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt named one of his trusted advisers as Chief of Staff. It has endured as a tradition of the American government ever since. It’s a relatively new thing in Nigerian government. In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo broke with tradition by appointing his Chief of Staff, Major General Abdullahi Mohammed, a retired military intelligence officer.”
He continued, “Obasanjo’s successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, abolished that office, instead, operating through a network of his own Katsina kinsmen. When Umaru succumbed to illness in May 2010, he was succeeded by Goodluck Jonathan who decided to name a new Chief of Staff in the person of Mike Ogiadomhe. The latter resigned to contest an election and was replaced by Jones Arogbofa. When Buhari won the election in 2015, he made Abba Kyari, a Shuwa Arab from Maiduguri, his new Chief of Staff. He kept him when he won a second term in 2019.”
As to the core responsibility of that office, he has this to say, “The Chief of Staff is an appointee of the President. His role is to manage the office of the high executive while coordinating his programmes and the core agencies needed to run the administration. He also serves as the principal channel of communication between the President and his core officials, including the Federal Executive Council. He also ensures that the engagements of the President, including the presidential fleet, operate in a flawless manner.”
From the foregoing, it is clear that the position of Chief of Staff to the President is a demanding office and should be given to someone who is very healthy, educated, diplomatic, and resourceful. The person must be a good manager of human and material resources and a team player. He must be compassionate and be fair to all. The President’s CoS should not be a power grabber, vindictive, provincial, corrupt or egocentric. The loyalty should not be only to the President but also to the country.
Was Buhari’s late CoS, Mallam Abba Kyari, a saint or villain? That depends on whom you ask. However, sincerely speaking, despite the eulogies being poured on him by some of his close associates and beneficiaries, including the President, public opinion on Kyari is not positive. Some say he was a highly misunderstood man; however, he was a very divisive figure, a controversial personality who preferred to be feared than being loved.
Not many Nigerians know who Abba Kyari was until he was appointed by Buhari after his electoral victory and inauguration in 2015. Since then, the man was trailed by a lot of controversies. In a 30-page memo written to the President by the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, in March 2017, el-Rufai said the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation (Babachir David Lawal) and the chief of staff did not have experience in public service, lacked humility, “in addition to being insensitive and rude to virtually most of the party leaders, ministers and governors The two officials whose titles might enable them to function as such generally alienate those that contributed to our success,” he said. Specifically, “The chief of staff is totally clueless about the APC and its internal politics at best as he was neither part of its formation nor a participant in the primaries, campaign, and elections. In summary, neither of them has the personality, experience, and the reach to manage your politics nationally or even regionally.” Recall that the then SGF was later found to have abused his office and therefore relieved of his position.
Even the wife of the President, Aisha, alluded to the fact that Kyari was among those who were hindering the success of her husband’s government. In October 2016, she told the BBC in an interview that her husband was being held hostage by a cabal. “The President does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years. Some people were sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position,” she had said. In December 2018, Aisha was more forthcoming when she said that two powerful personalities had constituted themselves as a hindrance to the speedy development of the country. She spoke at a conference organised by Project 4+4 in Abuja. The President’s wife said that she was disappointed in men who rather than fight these two men would go to them in the night begging for favour. Unconfirmed reports had it that Aisha was making veiled reference to the nephew of the President Mamman Daura and the departed Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.
In an August 30, 2017 letter written to the President by a former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, he claimed that for over six months he could not see the President who is the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources in order to complain to him about the insubordination and breach of due process in the award of $25bn contracts by a former Group Managing Director of NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru. Nothing came out of Kachikwu’s complaints. However, what interests me is why a serving minister cannot access the President in six months! Could Kyari as the Chief of Staff to Buhari have deliberately blocked Kachikwu’s access to the President given that he was a board member of the corporation? Not a few believed that the travails of Winifred Oyo-Ita as Head of Service of the Federation started after the altercation she had with Kyari over the recall of Abdulrasheed Maina into civil service. This heated argument took place at the venue of the Federal Executive Council meeting on November 1, 2017.
Truth be told, I care less about the tribe or religion of whoever will replace the deceased Chief of Staff. However, what the President should avoid like COVID-19 plague is having another surrogate president in the mould of Abba Kyari regarded by many as the de facto president of Nigeria, while Buhari is the de jure president. The country does not need a controversial figure, a power-drunk administrator who will ride roughshod over the people. The President needs an incorruptible and thoroughbred professional technocrat who will work behind the scene to assist him to implement his policies and programmes. The President should remember that the bulk stops at his table and not that of any Chief of Staff or presidential aide.
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