The choice of a new Chief of Staff to the President to succeed the influential and high-profiled late Abba Kyari who succumbed to COVID-19 last April has thrown the eerie corridors of the State House known as Aso Villa into an Olympiad of long knives, shadow boxing and mind games with no winner as at press time but has narrowed down to an epic match between two equally star-studded teams of Mohammed Hayatudeen led the Borno Boys and the Ibrahim Gambari led Kwara United.
The Decider in Chief, President Muhammadu Buhari has yet to decide regardless of all the relentless intrigues, hushed whispers and marathon caucusing by different camps of the presidential whisperers.
Kaftanpost has maintained a listening post to ensure that the process is instantaneously but accurately reported but any light of any tangible brightness is still far out of the circular tunnel of the Buhari inner circles.
Most of the initial aspirants have dropped out of contention. The earliest speculations were around Babagana Kingibe, a permanent feature of almost every Northerner- led government in Nigeria and a close confidant of the late Abba Kyari whose candidature was an unlikely kite flown by sheer assumption that Kingibe only needed to show the slightest interest in the job to beat off any rival.
It turned out that Kingibe did not want the job, for as Kaftanpost gathered, it would amount to merely codifying a limited version of the general soft power currently at the disposal of the former diplomat and elected but self-sabotaged Vice President to the late MKO Abiola legally acknowledge winner of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election.
Once the kite of Kingibe blew away, speculator market traded around familiar but less gifted Buhari’s close associates like Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu and the swashbuckling Customs and Excise Tsar, Hameed Ali, both of whom went not farther the resources of their online and poster campaigners.
Once weeks follow weeks and President Buhari continue to dither on what is ordinarily expected to be a prompt decision given the pivotal role a Chief of Staff must play in giving leadership and direction to the President’s core aides, the shadow recruitment crowds went nuclear by throwing up countless improbable names within party the All Progressives Congress cadres and outside of it, with various party groups and Buhari-parochial organisations touting the virtues of one candidate or the other.
Meanwhile, the ubiquitous cabal displayed supreme confidence in the potency of its conclave by reaching far and wide within their rich faculty to select a perfect candidate with demonstrable acumen and administrative gravitas of the type that President Buhari would recognise as the “best of us” in the shadows of an Abba Kyari.
Hayatudeen is the living manifestation of that executive selection satisfactory to the Cabal. For every move of the Cabal, there is an equal move of the anti-Cabal to balance the presidential polarity of power.
There has emerged a network of dispersed but coordinated influencers who canvass a quiet campaign based on arguments on the “merit” and a ‘national’ view point which has now culminated in Prof Ibrahim Gambari.
As it stands now, anyone not on the Cabal side of the divide is for Gambari. But the only person that matters, President Buhari listens to everyone without showing his hand.
The upper echelons of the so called Cabal have remained more stoic, sanguine and confident than the so called ‘merit’ lobby group who want immediate announcements while their iron is still hot.
They are much more to be seen in clusters and going from house to house, typing endlessly on WhatsApp and trying to know what the slightest twitch in the facial muscle of the President means. ‘Does that mean Baba has changed his mind?’ ‘Is he listening to them?’ ‘Have the requirements changed?’ Unless the President announces overnight or by Wednesday morning ahead of Federal Executive Council meeting, the game will become even more desperate for some.
Already, calculated leakages to the press have begun with the ‘merit’ faction believing that a momentum could be built by putting it out there and gaining favourable reviews that could encourage the President to ink the deal on paper.
The leaks have not done the trick but has put subordinates in tricky situations where they can neither confirm or deny any rumoured appointment, as an answer either way could be rued for a long time in the future should it rub a potential boss the wrong way.
The candidates too have learnt to adopt the code of omerta, as neither Hayatudeen nor Gambari would respond to Kaftanpost enquiries.
Presidential spokespersons Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu have seen no reason to clarify anything in the wake of the premature publications in both online and traditional press of the purported appointment of Gambari as the new Chief of Staff.
President Buhari continues to keep everyone guessing while the whispers continue. Those who know say nothing and those who say they know know nothing. Those who should know would neither deny nor confirm.
Kaftanpost sources have credibly assured that eventually President Buhari cannot dither for eternity and the candidates are not from the ethers.
Between the Borno Boys favoured by the Cabal and the Kwara United flying the kite of merit, a Chief of Staff would emerge in flesh and blood either as Mohammed Hayatudeen or Ibrahim Gambari to serve the President who remains taciturn and unperturbed by the noises of sympathisers or the exasperated sighs of observers who are wondering how a routine choice of a personal staff of the President, a position which is limited to the participation of the President alone, with no requirement of legislative confirmation or other constitutional rituals can pack in so much drama and din.
