By Igbotako Nowinta
This man has struggled with every inch to abrogate the fruits and promises of Nigeria’s independence, via his promiscuous romance with known despots. The result of the laboratory of public opinions is tilted in disfavor of Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari today. Because he has gambled his diplomatic years away, by fanning the embers of irresponsible governments that clamped calamitous economy and perilous democratic system on us all, he is therefore an obstacle to the establishment of an accelerated pluralistic and quality democracy. He will neither be compassionate and people-oriented nor a great ‘gatekeeper’ to Mr. President. For a man that has flirted, befriended and dined with the worst tyrants and their clones in Nigeria, wicked men, whose engineering of the nation’s social disparities has led to aggravated plunder of our collective patrimony to be a replacement for the late Abba Kyari, shows that our present rulers have ‘missed’ the target of taking the Nigerian masses along in their democratic agenda.
Agboola Ibrahim Gambari, the newly appointed Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, to me is an incurable Military apologist, a pseudo democrat and someone who is ever ready to risk everything, including his academic laurels, to advance his personal goals, and the parochial agenda of some Nigerian despots, who have had to ride roughshod on the people of Nigeria in the recent past.
That is why l have dubbed him here as a democratic gambler. Some of the facts that l will lay bare here about his previous public/official antecedents will convince us that this is not the type of guy that millions of Nigerians who surrendered their democratic rights to Mr. President in 2015, and in 2019, need at this most crucial time in the history of Nigeria.
Professor Ibrahim Gambari, reminds me quickly of two of Nigeria’s past public servants, Alhaji Aminu Saleh and Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, who in the course of serving their father’s land wrecked untold havoc and tenaciously worked against the interest of the impoverished millions of Nigerians.
It is sad that majority of our people have short memory about those personalities that unrestrainedly assisted the ‘tyrannical enemies’ of our country, to bring us to the present mess, in spite of the huge natural and human endowment God Almighty has poured on us.
I begin with Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji who was born with the silver spoon of the Sokoto Caliphate in his mouth and ended with government ‘spoon’ in his mouth. Early in 1964, Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji found himself in the Federal Ministry of Finance.
He went on to become one of the fruitful and long serving permanent secretaries in Nigeria. He was Minister of Finance and Planning. Alhaji served the terrible interest of various governments in Nigeria to the tilt.
Aminu Saleh was also a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Defense for donkey years. He equally rose to become Minister of Defense. His administrative flirtation with military rulers was beyond the ordinary run, even at the detriment of his health.
Alhaji Muhammed Saleh, risked everything including his health to support the top brass of the military in Nigeria. Now coming to the newly appointed Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari – Agboola Ibrahim Gambari.
I was the Chairman of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights ( CDHR), Edo State of Nigeria, between 1995 and 1999. I was fully aware of the demonic political intrigues that came to play when General Sani Abacha stage managed the extra-judicial murder of the late environmental rights icon, Ken Saro – Wiwa, who was President of the Movement For the Survival of Ogoni People ( MOSOP).
Sani Abacha threw caution to the winds and unleashed a personal vendetta against Ken Saro-Wiwa for daring to demand inherent rights for his Ogoni people.
The brutal hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight of his kinsmen on November 10 1995, was the height of Abacha’s transformation of Nigeria into a theatre of violence, by employing crude arm-twisting administrative methods for which Gambari was a gambler.
We all can still remember Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who was President of Nigeria from 1979 – 1983, and the tragic misgovernance that he represented in the history of Nigeria.
What of Alhaji Umaru Dikko, who was the defacto ‘President’ under Shehu Shagari. As the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Rice, Umaru Dikko performed wonders in the name of corruptly enriching himself.
When General Muhammadu Buhari decided in 1984, to deal with Alhaji Umaru Dikko, as the Head of the Military junta, that sacked the Shehu Shagari’s wayward civilian government, he equally threw diplomatic caution to the gutter.
Buhari orchestrated a commando style operation to bring back Umaru Dikko to Nigeria, to answer for his crimes against the people of Nigeria, instead of utilizing the diplomatic window available between Nigeria and Great Britain.
Ibrahim Gambari as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gambled along in the celebrated ‘crating’ misadventure of Umaru Dikko. Professor Gambari professed recklessly in favor of General Ibrahim Babangida, when the ‘evil genius’ annulled the freest presidential election in Nigeria’s history.
As Babangida turned his arsenal against progressive forces, Gambari became a trusted ally versed in diplomatic voodoism.
Given the alleged condemnable role played by Abba Kyari, as Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, in blocking and usurping statutory powers beyond his official duties, within the Presidency, as a gatekeeper to Mr. President, Gambari’s recent appointment is seen by many patriotic Nigerians as a huge deficit, a road block that will not push the agenda of the millions of Nigerian voters, but that of his master.
Take it or leave it, Nigerian voters want a gatekeeper to Mr. President now, that will do the needful on their behalf, by offering independent, altruistic opinions that will push the welfare of Nigerians to the front burners of practical implementation, as we all know most Nigerian are poverty stricken today.
Given his antecedents in the past, Gambari, is most unlikely to change his spots like the proverbial leopard, just as he has shown in the past. Why was Chief Tom Ikimi denied the Chairmanship of the All Progressives Congress (APC), when the party zoned that position to the South in 2015?
Why did the progressive forces ably led by the National leader, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, facilitate the enthronement of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun as Chairman, instead of Tom Ikimi?
Chief Ikimi was pushed aside because he contributed ingloriously to the brutal murder of Ken Saro- Wiwa, in 1995, as the Foreign Affairs Minister to General Sani Abacha, and the treacherous role he played as Chairman of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) during Babangida’s reign, when the winner of the June 12,1993 Presidential Election, Chief Moshood Abiola was prevented from actualizing his mandate. Tom Ikimi helped to push Abiola out of reckoning!
As corruption ate its way into the new privileged military class in Nigeria, Gambari parroted their evil political agenda and fraudulent manipulations; he equally dressed himself up by assisting demented dictators across Africa in his capacity as United Nation’s Undersecretary in New York.
As incompetence and insensitivity of those in authority flourished, Gambari added his own repressive impetus and tendencies. Are the policy makers within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) telling the whole country that inside and outside Nigeria, that there is no versatile, altruistic, cerebral and dynamic young chap that can man the gate to Mr. President as Chief of Staff?
How long are we going to continue to perambulate backwards, truncating the accelerated growth and progress of our country, by placing senile, wasted, almost invalid old men in the position of strategic importance? How long will this nauseating scenario last?
This man has struggled with every inch to abrogate the fruits and promises of Nigeria’s independence, via his promiscuous romance with known despots. The result of the laboratory of public opinions is tilted in disfavor of Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari today.
Because he has gambled his diplomatic years away, by fanning the embers of irresponsible governments that clamped calamitous economy and perilous democratic system on us all, he is therefore an obstacle to the establishment of an accelerated pluralistic and quality democracy.
He will neither be compassionate and people-oriented nor a great ‘gatekeeper’ to Mr. President. For a man that has flirted, befriended and dined with the worst tyrants and their clones in Nigeria, wicked men, whose engineering of the nation’s social disparities has led to aggravated plunder of our collective patrimony to be a replacement for the late Abba Kyari, shows that our present rulers have ‘missed’ the target of taking the Nigerian masses along in their democratic agenda.
The appointment of Ibrahim Gambari has revealed this bitter truth: what we have is not open progressive processes, but we are being administered by a secret, unbending and self-serving cabal.
Nowinta Igbotako wrote: Where we are – A call for democratic revolution in Nigeria.
