Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as MissedOpportunity for Unity

​Conventionally, Buhari has not committed any wrong in bypassing about twenty-five Generals to appoint Major-General Farouk Yahaya as Nigeria's new Chief of Army Staff (COAS). Since all the bypassed Army Generals would, prematurely, be retired for the sake of Command respect, one can safely state that the appointment of Farouk Yahaya as COAS over his seniors is a waste of talents and resources unless the appointing can prove that his appointee, Farouk Yahaya, will make a better COAS than the superseded officers. Two main words that are never considered while making appointments into offices in Nigeria, whether in the military or in the civil service, are competence/merit and justice. This did not start with Buhari who is only following praxis in the Army. Let's look at some past examples.

Lieutenant Colonel Wellington Umoh Bassey, was enlisted in the British Nigerian Army (BNA) in 1944 as a Non-Commission Officer (NCO). He was Commissioned as an officer in 1946 and rose to the rank of a Major in 1957. On the other hand, Major-General J. T. U. Aguiyi Ironsi was enlisted as an NCO in the BNA in 1947 simultaneously with Brigadier S. A. Ademulegun who were both commissioned as officers in 1949. While Ironsi was promoted to the rank of a Major in April 1959, Ademulegun was promoted to the rank of a Major in June 1959. In April 1963, both Bassey, Ironsi and Ademulegun were promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Within the same year, 1963, Ironsi and Ademulegun were given accelerated promotions to the ranks of Colonel and Brigadier, with Ironsi being promoted to Major General in 1965, while Bassey was stagnant at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. It is noteworthy that Bassey was an Ibibio from the then Eastern Region and remarkably he was superseded in promotion by Brigadiers Maimalari and Ogundipe (Commissioned in 1953), Colonels Shodeinde (Commissioned in 1950), Adebayo (Commissioned in 1953) and Kuru Muhammed ( Commissioned in 1954), all of them from the main ethnic group.

After the military coup of January 15, 1966, if seniority in the Army had been followed, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, would not have been appointed the Military Governor of Eastern Region since five Lieutenant Colonels by date of promotions were senior to him. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Bassey was already a Major in 1957 when Ojukwu was Commissioned in 1957 to become a Captain in 1961. Lieutenant Colonel U. O. Imo (Igbo) was Commissioned as an officer in 1955 and was promoted to a Captain in 1957 when Ojukwu was Commissioned.  George Kurubo, an Jaw, was Commissioned in 1955, two years before Ojukwu (1957) and Lieutenant Colonels Philip Effiong (Ibibio) and Henry Njoku (Igbo) were commissioned officers in 1956, a year before Ojukwu was Commissioned. Thus, in appointing Ojukwu as the Military Governor of Eastern Region, Ironsi shoved aside three non-Igbo Easterners and two Igbos to pave way for Ojukwu.

Ironically, after the coup of July 29, 1966, Ojukwu demanded that hierarchy in Army ranks should be respected and he demanded that either Brigadier Ogundipe or Colonel Adebayo should succeed Ironsi presumed dead in the military putsch. However, Ojukwu did not relinquish the Military Governor's post in the East to any of his senior Lieutenant Colonels, Ibibio or Igbo, from the East for the sake of uniting the minority Ijaw, Efik, and Ibibio people with the Igbo majority in the region. The typical style of, do as I say and not as I do was in display.

S. Kadiri       

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: 31 May 2021 23:00
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as MissedOpportunity for Unity

 

Professor Iheduru has demonstrated here a very close affiliation with the Nigerian military over the past ten years that is truly remarkable for his depth of knowledge about senior officers.

TF's insights about the shortcomings of the Nigerian military establishment are also very insightful.

OAA

Sent from my Galaxy

-------- Original message --------

From: Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com>

Date: 31/05/2021 11:51 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as MissedOpportunity for Unity

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I don't know Maj-Gen Farouk Yahaya, but I know at least 10 of the other very senior army officers who were not chosen as the Chief of Army Staff. They are as follows:

1. Maj-Gen Chike Ude (Enugu State) and Maj-Gen MSA Aliyu (Zamfara State) who were Directing Staff (faculty) colleagues of mine at the National Defense College (NDC), Abuja in 2012-2013 when they were both Brigadier-Generals. 

Gen. Ude had spent years as a military aide ("brain box") in the Ministry of Defense and later became Principal Staff Officer Coordination (PSO) at the College at NDC--pretty much like a college/university registrar. As a Major-General, he was GOC in Sokoto, and later the General Officer Commanding the Multinational Joint Task Force (comprising Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria) that pretty much pushed Boko Haram out of Chad and Nigeria, but the Nigerian Army and Air Force failed to dominate the vacated battle space. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met anywhere. A very fine officer! He could wipe out Boko Haram in a month, if given the free hand to do so. Nothing like "bandits" when he was in Sokoto. Who born them? Hi eyes could pierce through a concrete wall. On a different note, he'd win the first prize at any comedy try-out, but the audience would go home with cracked ribs!

Gen. Aliyu (popularly called "MSA") is an effable, but no-nonsense officer. We were together for barely three months but he left an impression on me as a very level-headed human being with a fair sense of judgement. He miraculously survived a roll-over car accident in Borno State in July 2017 after a long hospital stay (because he was wearing his seatbelt), but his colleague Maj-Gen Yushua M. Abubakar (who was also a faculty colleague of mine at NDC) died -- he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Abubakar jovially called himself "The Emir of the Nigerian Army," even though privately he detested the feudal anachronism! To him, I was mai takarda!

2. Maj-Gen Chukwuemeka C. Okonkwo (Imo), Maj-Gen Y. P. Auta (Kebbi), Maj-Gen S. A. Yaro (Bauchi), Maj-Gen K. a. Y. Isiyaku (Niger), Maj-Gen H. P. Z. Vintenaba (Taraba) were all my students (Participants) in Course 20 at NDC, Abuja. I still remember them from Syndicate Room (seminar room) discussions and their formal presentations in Abacha Hall and during research paper proposal and Project defenses, as well as during foreign affairs simulation exercises. Fine officers! They're all graduates of the Master of Strategic Studies degree program at the University of Ibadan, a six months top-up program for highest performers at NDC, Abuja. I later got to know Okonkwo and Isiyaku much better after they left NDC.

Gen. Okonkwo, a certified engineer, had been a highly decorated staff officer as a Colonel in the UN Headquarters (Military Affairs/Peacekeeping) in New York City for at least four years before coming to NDC for his strategic studies course. I got to know him at a much deeper level when he was appointed Managing Director & CEO, Nigerian Army Post-Service Housing Development Ltd., following his promotion to Brigadier-General, from 2014-2016. The CEO of PHD Ltd. runs perhaps the largest real estate outfit in Nigeria! No other CEO in the history of PHD Ltd. comes close to the spectacular job he did sanitizing the post-service housing estates that had been pillaged by his predecessors across the country. Phase 5 Housing Estate in Kurudu, Abuja (near Jesuit College and Navy Town --post-service estate) which he revitalized is the best post-service estate in the country -- he opened it up to civilians to remove the aura of "barracks" which the other estates have become. Who wants to live in a "barracks" again after 35 years in the force? Phase 5 is now so nice that it counts as residents a recently retired Supreme Court Justice, the former Auditor-General of the Federation, very senior retired and serving officers, academics, the professions, and two high-end primary and middle schools. Phase 5 Kurudu is an interesting showpiece experiment in home-owners/residents self-governance in Nigeria.

Gen. Okonkwo's also excellence manifested during his service as Special Assistant (Special Projects) to COAS Buratai (2016-2018) and later as GOC, Operation Lafiya Dole in Monguno from 2018-2020, a period that saw the NA pushing Boko Haram back into Sambisa Forest's outermost boundaries with Lake Chad. He was shot at three times in the war front, but he survived them all. Again, the course of the war would have been different, but for insufficient and/obsolete equipment/war materiele which were compounded by political interference with specific campaigns from "high ups." He's currently GOC, Joint Task Force in Jos, Plateau State -- Nigeria's ethno-religious tinder box. By the way, Gen. Okonkwo is also a charismatic Pentecostal church pastor!

Gen. Isiyaku (popularly known as "KAY" (from his initials) is one of the classiest officers of the Nigerian Army. His first command as Brigadier-General after NDC/UI was GOC at Obinze, Imo State. He left with the reputation of creating the best example of civil-military relations between his Brigade and the citizens of the state. I met him again in July 2017 in Abuja when he became the pioneer Principal Staff Officer Coordination (PSO Coord) at the newly established Army War College Nigeria. I had gone there to give a lecture to Course 1 students, mostly senior Lt. Colonels and junior Colonels. But for him and the Commandant, Maj-Gen. Alani Okunloa (another colleague from NDC, Abuja), the students would have thrown me out of the college when I enraged them by saying that, if I had the power, I'd have all of them booted out of the army for buying into Prof. Osisioma Nwolise's nonsense (or perhaps epistemic fire) about "spiritual intelligence." Little did I know that Lt. Gen. Buratai, their Oga at the Top at the time, was the Chief Priest of this strange military "doctrine" that has eaten very, very deep into the psyche of most military officers in Nigeria today! They accused me vehemently of being "too critical" and "full of diaspora and American biases" when I talked about the frightening levels of state fragility exemplified by the growing list of internal security operations (ISOs) in 32 of the 36 states of the Federation and from which some of them benefitted materially as Commanders prior to enrolling in the College. I wonder what those students (mostly Brigadier-Generals by now) would be saying today about Nigeria?

Then, you have Maj-Gen Johnson Olawumi (Ekiti State), Maj-Gen Okwudili F. Azinta (Enugu State), and Maj-Gen Henry "Ayams" Ayamasaowei (Bayelsa State). 

Gen. Ayams (that's what everybody calls him) was a long-serving Academy Registrar at the Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA), Kaduna. Our chance encounter at an event in Abuja in 2012 led to working with him to recruit some Nigerian diaspora academics in STEM to spend their sabbaticals at NDA. A very charismatic fellow and dapper dresser (in civilian clothing), he's reputed for running a tight ship during his tenure. 

Gen. Azinta is one of the smartest senior military officers in Nigeria today, with a reputation for integrity and transformative leadership. I believe he's a First Class graduate of Chemistry, pioneer degree holding class at NDA. I met him at NDA in 2014 when he was the DMT--Director of Military Training as a Brigadier-General. I was at the academy to revamp their unbelievably watery General Education core and to help design the blueprint for the new Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies and Military Science. Within six months of his tenure at NDA, Gen. Azinta and the no-nonsense Commandant at the time, Maj-Gen. Inuwa M. Idris had withdrawn 42 cadets for all manner of indiscretions and even crimes. Most of them were children of very powerful people (including retired senior military officers) who were booted out for offenses ranging from drug trafficking, rape, AWOL (some notorious ones up to three weeks!), theft, forgeries, etc. This was the peak of Boko Haram insurgency when the terrorists occupied 14 local government areas, and declared their caliphate in Gwoza, Nigeria. For a long time, some of the NDA cadets didn't join the military to fight wars; many were there because their parents wanted a military officer in the family to compliment their other children who were doctors, engineers or lawyers, etc. It was from the ranks of this category of officers that Nigeria saw tactical and operational commanders who would take flight upon sighting Boko Haram, leaving the non-commissioned officers to fend for themselves. There was palpable fear that the insurgents could have made a dash for Abuja, if they knew how much the military was caught flat-footed in the raging fourth-generation war. Gen. Azinta was determined to boot all of them out of the Academy, and he pretty much succeeded. The academy also changed its curriculum: instead of continuous military training for five years, the first year for the 2013/2014 class was devoted exclusively to full military officer training. The rationale was that the cadets would be commissioned 2nd Lieutenants at short notice and shipped to the war front to stem the serious attrition of tactical-level officers, some of whom were melting as the triumphant Boko Haram was bearing down on them.

Gen. Azinta's next posting was the Nigerian Military Training Depot, Zaria which had seen its trainee size balloon from 3,000 to 9,000! Some troops were graduating without ever firing a weapon! Within a year, this no-nonsense General sanitized the Depot. From there he became GOC 7 Division in Maiduguri. He was sent there to literally take the war to the insurgents. Azinta is the quintessential servant-leader who could get his soldiers to do the impossible because they trust him and have no doubt he has their back. The 7 Division, set up in 2013, has had a quick succession of bad leaders, one of whom was shot by his soldiers for denying them their rations and for his "treasonable offense" in sending troops to be slaughtered by BH despite clear intelligence against that decision.

Finally, I'd hate to see the NA lose Maj-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, a first class engineer and administrator. He and his colleagues built the first locally made armored car in Nigeria in 2011. Scratch that; the Research and Production Unit (RAP) and the Biafran Army already took that prize during the Nigerian civil war, 1967-1970! The then COAS, Lt. Gen. Ihejirika (2010-2014) was so impressed that he appointed then Brig-Gen. Olawumi his Principal Staff Officer--literally the gate-keeper to the COAS. If you met him in the evening in his golf shirt and pants and disarming intelligence and humility, you'd swear he'd never have anything to do with a scruffy military. In late 2013, he was appointed the Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), one of the most coveted "juicy" jobs that sees the most lobbying ever in the NA. Some critics demurred that Gen. Ihejirika would appoint an engineer to a position that is a traditional preserve of the Education Corps. Within six months, Gen. Olawumi transformed the NYSC, using technology to modernize the operations of an agency that hadn't changed much since the days of the famous (later infamous!) Col. Patrick Obasa. He's so confident in his abilities that he goes to any length to bring in talents to get any job done efficiently. He was promptly removed as D-G around August 2015 under the new PMB regime; too many favored officers were lobbying for the plum job. His reply to my sms about his reassignment was: "Good riddance to a bad dream!" Little did I know he didn't like the job; he preferred his armored personnel carriers, despite the fact that I probably had had more interactions with him than I had with any other NA officer up to that point. His subsequent command postings have equally benefitted from this shinning star in the NA.

As I noted above, I don't know Gen. Yahaya -- he was in Chile while his course mates were at NDC for their strategic studies course. He's probably as good as any of the officers I've highlighted here. Yes, it's the prerogative of the Commander-in-Chief to appoint whomsoever he likes as COAS, and that choice has never been based on merit in Nigeria's history. Ethnicity and/or religion may or may not have been a factor in the Yahaya choice. I'm saddened, however, that Nigeria is set to lose these incredibly talented officers along with 24 other Major Generals as a result of this coup-proofing organizational technology of the state and regime survival strategy that has seriously eroded the country's military effectiveness. Even then, did the C-in-C have to go this deep to find a suitable, coup-proof capable army chief? Quite often those Colonels who turn Abacha Lecture Hall at NDC into their sleeping rooms are usually the first to be promoted to Brigadier-Generals, topped with "lucrative" Brigade Command assignments. Additionally, there's a lot of favoritism in selecting officers for courses overseas; it would be miraculous if it wasn't the case. 

Sadly, also, some of the smartest officers tend to get weeded out much earlier, at the ranks of Major or Lt. Colonel!  Many people have advocated for a completely new military in Nigeria. I couldn't agree more with that position.

On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 2:22 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

I wish I had time to answer Ken, as there are many books on the Egyptian military dating back to Sadat. It was a deliberate state policy that created the military dominance in the Egyptian economy.

The Nigerian military took a different tradition since it became bloated with the Civil War—it became more parasitic and not integral to the productive forces. In the 1980s, if you asked a primary school student what he would like to do as an adult, it would be to work for Customs or join the army—both were extremely lucrative. And to reflect the social order, if you ask that same student, if a boy, "what does you dad do at home?" He would say parlour (living room). What does your mom do? "Kitchen".

Indeed, after 1999, Boko Haram replaced direct participation in government to make money. The greatest justification for large military/security budget has been the insurgency.

In politics, you allow whatever works to fester.  Just as senior officers made money from it, bandits are also now profiting by kidnapping school children to collect ransom.

If you approach Nigeria from rational politics, you can reach the conclusion that it is a "failed state".

If you approach it from state capture and chaos, Nigeria works well, from the politicians to the Pentecostalist leaders who are stinkingly rich.

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 4:08 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity

 

Ken,

 

I don't know, to be honest. But I suspect that the relative health of Nigeria's civil society plays a part. Ghana's civil society seems to be just as healthy as Nigeria's. There, too, the military isn't as overpowering as it used to be during periods of military regimes.

 

 I have some familiarity with the Republic of Benin, and my sense is that the military has retreated there as well. I don't know what's responsible for it. Maybe the fact of the military not being in power--either by proxy or in real terms--accounts for this.

 

I barely know about Togo, but it looks to me like a monocracy built around the Gnassingbé clan.

 

Farooq

 

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

 

 

On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 7:04 AM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

thanks farooq. how did that happen? a reaction against abacha?

what about ghana? togo? benin?

 

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2021 4:10 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity

 

Ken,

 

Fortunately, in Nigeria, the military has ceased to be that powerful. It used to be when the country was under military regimes. 

 

Farooq 

Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com


Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

 

On Sat, May 29, 2021, 3:24 PM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

in other african countries, the military enjoys a considerable hold over the economy. egregious examples are burundi, egypt, zimbabwe. it is very widespread. no one's mentioned that here, or maybe i missed it. any thoughts to what extent it is true in nigeria?

ken

 

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2021 11:18 AM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity

 

It's a tradition in the Nigerian military, the police,  and even other paramilitary organizations that whenever someone junior has been appointed as head, all higher-ups have to be compulsorily retired so as not to create problems of respect,  discipline, and loyalty for the new head honcho.

 

 I guess discipline,  loyalty, and respect for the head are more important than the competence and institutional memories of retired senior officers. 

 

Farooq 

Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com


Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

 

On Sat, May 29, 2021, 6:23 AM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Farooq:

I have been pondering over the issue of why 35 other Generals may be asked to retire, as I read but without confirmation, as soon as the appointment was announced. National unity is one consideration, but there are other issues, I suspect. How a group in power reads a political space is always critical. Situational politics is quick to disregard other considerations:

 

What is the agenda?

Is it about "national" control?

How do you establish the grip on power?

Do you want to prevent a coup and look for loyalists?

Who does resource distribution?

Which part of a country do you want to weaken?

What is the core ingredient of "factionalism" at a specific moment?

Who profits from chaos?

TF

 

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, May 29, 2021 at 4:35 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity

 

Saturday, May 29, 2021

COAS Appointment as Missed Opportunity for Unity

By Farooq A. Kperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

The appointment of my namesake, Major General Farouk Yahaya, as Chief of Army Staff to succeed the late Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru who died in a plane crash on May 21 is yet another tone-deaf but entirely predictable mismanagement of Nigeria's diversity at a time it desperately needs to be cared for with deliberate symbolic nourishment. 

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There is no question that General Yahaya is qualified for the job. His CV shows evidence of immense professional and academic preparedness for the position. But the alternatives to him are just as qualified, so this is never about competence for the job. It's about symbolism and the politics of representation at a time of heightened national storm and stress.

Many people had hoped that the regime would appoint Major General Benjamin Ahanotu from Anambra State as Attahiru's successor both to water the perishingly shriveling tree of national unity in the country and to pacify the Southeast whose sense of alienation in the last five years is resurrecting the ghost of Biafra secessionist agitation.  

Since Ahanotu is just as professionally and academically prepared as Yahaya is, a lot more would have been gained in symbolic and substantive terms if the regime had chosen to not appoint another Northern Muslim to succeed a northern Muslim who succeeded a previous northern Muslim.

In no previous civilian administration has this ever happened. Former President Shehu Shagari had ethnic and religious diversity in his choice of Chief of Army Staff. He started with Lieutenant General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade, then appointed Lieutenant General Gibson Jalo, and finally Lieutenant General Mohammed Inuwa Wushishi.

Although Obasanjo's choices of Chief of Army Staff didn't reflect religious diversity, they reflected regional and ethnic diversity. Goodluck Jonathan also chose only Christians from the South-South and the Southeast, which we condemned, but his security council was more broad-based than Buhari's is.

Many well-placed northern politicians who are disturbed by the widening intensity of fissiparity in the Nigerian polity told me they intervened to ensure that the regime appointed someone other than a northern Muslim as Chief of Army Staff. One man told me he was part of a group that reached out to Professor Ibrahim Gambari, Muhammadu Buhari's Chief of Staff, to persuade him to advise his boss to appoint Ahanotu—or another qualified southerner—as Chief of Army Staff.

Perhaps, that was where the group erred. Gambari has no powers to influence consequential policy decisions in this regime. A personage who is intimately familiar with the workings of the Presidential Villa told me a few days ago that Gambari was recently caught dozing off in the waiting room of Sabiu "Tunde" Yusuf, the 30-something-year-old cousin of Buhari's who is also his special assistant. 

The man said the fact of Gambari drifting off in Yusuf's waiting room was indicative of the extended minutes, perhaps hours, that he had been waiting for the young man. But, for me, it emblematizes Gambari's powerlessness and lack of access to the man he is supposed to be Chief of Staff to.

As dramatic as this revelation was, it wasn't shocking to me. I have always known that Sabiu "Tunde" Yusuf, whose highest work experience prior to joining his cousin's government was a phone recharge card seller, is the real successor to Abba Kyari.

In my November 23, 2019 column titled "Government of Buhari's Family, By His Family, and For His Family," I described him as "one of the most powerful people in Nigeria today. He determines who sees and who doesn't see Buhari. Only Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari can overrule him."

I also pointed out in my May 16, 2020 column titled "Real Reason the Buhari Cabal Picked Gambari as CoS" that Gambari's linguistic "handicap" in the Hausa language would ensure that he isn't sufficiently close enough with Buhari to have any meaningful interpersonal relationship with him. That, I said, would whittle away the influence of his office.

A May 25, 2020 exclusive Daily Trust story titled "How Buhari's Chief of Staff, Gambari facilitated removal of TCN boss" proved me right. "The Special Assistant to the President (President Secretariat), Sabi'u Yusuf, the same day, wrote a letter referenced PRES/65-I/COS/3/750, addressed to the CoS, Prof. Gambari, conveying Buhari's approval of his earlier memo," the story said.

So, unlike Abba Kyari who had a direct access to Buhari and whom Buhari said all ministers should meet if they wanted anything from him, Gambari has an intermediary between him and Buhari, and that intermediary is a blood relative of his planted there by Mamman Daura, his Trinity College, Dublin-educated nephew on whom he has always been emotionally and intellectually dependent. 

As I pointed out in my May 30, 2020 column titled, "Gambari: Embrace and Alienation of an Outsider on the Inside," "The real Chief of Staff to Buhari is Sabi'u 'Tunde' Yusuf (of course, acting on Mamman Daura's behalf) while Ibrahim Gambari is only the public face of the office— with some legroom to do the most obvious official requirements of his job."

I've gone to this length to rejig the reader's memory just to make the case that anyone who wanted to influence the appointment of the new Chief of Army Staff should have gone to Mamman Daura who is the real, if unofficial, president of Nigeria. But Daura has a really retrograde and fossilized understanding of Nigeria's ethnic and religious diversity.

Nonetheless, in case people who can influence Daura are reading this, he should be made self-aware that in moments such as Nigeria is going through now, even little symbolic acts of inclusion go a long way. At the twilight of his life, he has become the luckiest Nigerian alive. He has unofficial presidential powers without winning or rigging an election, staging a coup, or even being appointed. Even for the sake of his grandchildren, he should snap out of his provincial cocoon and save the country from avoidable implosion.

Nigeria's chance for continued existence going forward will be dependent on intentional symbolic gestures that nurture national cohesion. National cohesion doesn't magically emerge out of thin air because people who are luxuriating in the decadent orbits of power facilely proclaim Nigeria's unity to be "settled" and "non-negotiable." Nation-building is never "settled"; it is always in a state of negotiation and renegotiation. 

Unity is not an article of faith to be internalized and accepted unquestioningly. It is consciously sowed, watered, and nourished by acts of kindness to the disadvantaged, by equity and justice to all, by consensus-building, by deliberate healing of the existential wounds that naturally emerge in our interactions as constituents of a common national space, and by acknowledging and working to cover our ethnic, religious, regional, and cultural fissures. The efforts will never be perfect or fool-proof but doing something about a problem is always better than complacency and smug self-satisfaction.

Most progressive Muslim northerners I know are embarrassed to no end by the extreme and unprecedented Arewaization of appointments in this regime. They are embarrassed and worried because the lopsidedness of the appointments invites unearned hate to innocent northerners who don't materially benefit from them, line the pockets of a privileged few, and alienate our compatriots from the South. That's not sustainable if we still want a country. 

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyiheduru@gmail.com

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