CoAS Appointment As Missed Opportunity For Unity

By Farooq Kperogi

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.

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 agitations.

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, even 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.

By Farooq Kperogi

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.

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 agitations.

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, even 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.