Victor EzejaFormer Chief of Staff to the late ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, Prof Ibrahim Gambari, has admitted that there was a cabal in Buhari’s government.
Gambari, a veteran diplomat, stated this while responding to persistent rumours that a strong cabal was at work during Buhari’s presidency.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAccording to him, due to the nature of the office of the presidency, every government usually form a cabal that help the presidency in making decisions on key issues.
“Every government has a cabal. They may call them a kitchen cabinet; they may call them a think tank,” Gambari stated when he featured on Channels Television’s Inside Sources, on Friday.
Justifying the reason every government forms a cabal, the diplomat said: “It’s the nature of the office of the president that they must have some people in and out of government whom they can let their guard down to and talk to freely.
“Some have more powers than others, but I’m bold to say that every government has a cabal of some kind or another, whatever name it is called. So, there was a cabal under Buhari.”
According to Gambari, Buhari had instructed that all memos going to the president must pass through the chief of staff, but some members of the inner circle, didn’t adhere to that directive as they often bypassed him.
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Gambari also disclosed that some appointees of Buhari often bypassed him to secretly send memos to the president.
He said they exploited the president’s “weak point” to get their messages across informally.
“When I came as Chief of Staff to the President, he made a statement publicly. He said all memos must go through the Chief of Staff before coming to him.
“Even the Vice President (Yemi Osinbajo), to his credit, always passed his memos through me and several ministers, but our people still got their memos to him from behind because they knew his weak point and who to use and he never stopped them, but the advantage I had was that the memos came back to me,” the diplomat stated.
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Buhari, who was buried on Tuesday, 15 July, ruled Nigeria for eight years from 2015 to 2023.
Gambari, who had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s under Buhari’s military regime, was also Buhari’s Chief of Staff for three years from May 2020 to May 2023.
Reflecting on the late former president’s approach to governance, Gambari claimed that despite growing pressure, Buhari was hesitant to fire anyone and had a strong sense of loyalty to his appointees.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
