WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com
This week, I remember a man who paid the utmost price working for the safety, sanctity and overall development of his country; a man who died in active service for his motherland. Abba Kyari, the late chief of staff to the president of Nigeria was an enigma, loved and hated alike across the divide as per choice. He had just returned from a trip to Germany where he went to discuss a way out of the nation’s energy challenges; he came back with good news of agreement with Siemen, the giant electricity infrastructure building company; but at the expense of his life. Your earthly journey ended some 730 days ago when we all thought you had defeated death and you are getting up to resume duty for your awaiting principal. You threw the entire nation into mourning; even your critics could not but stop to recognise the enigma that you were and the eternal loss your demise represents for the country. Your burial was simple just as the life you lived was simple; a throng of friends, families and even enemies joined the procession of mourners all the way to the cemetery where your remains were finally laid to rest; all defying the raging COVID-19 pandemic of the time to pay their respect. You are gone; you left us but we cannot leave you. We have continued to recollect the days you spent with us and the doggedness of your contributions to our national life and the emancipation from the shackles of past maladministration and governance. Tributes after tributes remembered you as a patriot who bridged painful rivalries, a strong force behind the rejuvenation of the country from the ruins of the past and a brain behind the remarkable policies of the Muhammadu Buhari government that have redefined governance and service delivery in the country. Some people were made for the office they occupy while some learn the trade; you belonged to the former, the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President could not have had any better occupier than you. The ruggedness, the commitment, and the innovation, as well as the contributions you made to the policies that have redefined the lives and livelihoods of Nigerians were second to none. It was obvious your principal could not have had a better lieutenant. You were hated by many, no doubt, but the reasons were also obvious; the protective wall you built around structures and systems of governance and administration to halt the operations of parasitic and non-contributory political
elements and saboteurs, definitely made you enemies in life. You were a good man, so widely misunderstood and deliberately misrepresented as a message of political biases and emotional propaganda, but you remained fiercely loyal to your principal, President Muhammadu Buhari and to Nigeria. A good man is gone. Gone home. We all wake up, that fateful Saturday morning to the unexpected news of your passing. It was the least expected outcome, because we were of the opinion that you had beaten the pandemic; we had all received great news of your leap recovery even a day earlier. Till now, we cannot question Allah; we have accepted the reality of your death 3 we agreed that all souls must taste death. Today, two year after, as we remember Abba Kyari, the sadness of his demise gives way by the recollections of the great man he was in life; beyond the travesty of misrepresentations by the critics of the government who saw his presence as a roadblock to many selfish desires-to-be-realised. We remember how you put your life on the line for the country, immersed, behind the scene, to see that the country stood a chance against the ravaging pandemic, robustly engaged and involved with general planning, decision making and arranging implementations around the clock to put the country ahead of the invasion. Even in the week leading to his testing positive to COVID-19, he was immersed, behind the scene, in how to ensure that Nigeria stood a good chance against the virus ravaging the world. He was constantly probing: how many ventilators and ICU beds did we have, how would those stack up against different scenarios, what would be the best strategy to deploy in the circumstances, how could we ramp up capacity for testing and treatment, and how would we limit the definite economic impact of the pandemic? He was not only asking but, as the President’s foremost principal aide, he was also arranging, coordinating, working round the clock, as was his wont, even when diabetes had not put him in perfect health himself. In life, you were hugely misrepresented and demonised; the opposition took you out to disparage your principal and sell dummies to Nigerians, yet you had remained unbothered, your intensity, your passion and the perfectionism of Abba Kyari would not give way. You are remembered and would be remembered through eternity and history of Nigeria as perhaps, the best personal aide to a president.
Your strong public views and obvious role in policy formation and governance was literally new to Nigerians, and the opposition took advantage of it to foment
messages of hate against your person. Many wondered how a non-elected aide could be so powerful and deeply involved in national issues. They failed to recognise that that was the very reason your principal found you worthy of the position and appointed you. They refused to recognise that the power you exercised was the power legitimately delegated to you by your principal, who trusted you absolutely, after all, a subordinate can only be as powerful as his principal permits. It was not your fault that you were roundly educated and exposed, and you patriotically set your mind to use your deep well of knowledge and experience to make Nigeria work for Nigerians. It was not your fault that you held strong opinions and you expressed them fully to the cause and benefit of the exalted office you held, your principal, and the nation, Nigeria.
Your fault sir, was that you insisted the President was not misled by parasites who lobbied the seat of power, and whose only mission around the powerhouse of the country was to orchestrate events only in ways that would favour their selfish plans. Really, you did make enemies for yourself, but for the good cause, and you are loved and still being loved by many more for the stance you took for all our sake.
Your life taught us a lesson in loyalty. You sacrifice your personal interest, your public acceptance and even the peace of your immediate family for the cause you believed in; you put all of your educational prowess and muscle at the service of Mr. President and the same people who were busy disparaging your name and personality without ever being bothered. You took bullets after bullets for the government you served without ever complaining till your death; you considered them all part of your duty. But then, you did enjoy the utmost reciprocated loyalty of your principal.
In your lifetime, you were attacked like no one else, not even the President. You were presented to Nigerians by PDP and their minions, in the very bad light, yet you would never care to waste precious time engaging them in their malevolence, not for once did you care to set the record straight for posterity. Rather, you were bothered more by what you called the verdict of conscience and of God. Sir, your life taught me, and I believe, all of us eternal lessons.
You were the best example of an aide; you literally function to organise the public and service life of the President, in a way that is strange to the bookmakers. You took bullets for your principal so much that most enemies stopped talking about the President while you were at your duty post.
Sir, you have gone but the legacies you left behind would forever remain with us. You stepped up to patriotic responsibilities to become actively involved in shaping the policies of the government unlike any occupier of your office before you. Your contributions to the border closure policy that has become one of the most focal success point for the successful rice revolution, the CBN interventions that limited the citizens sufferings during the COVID-19 and several other of the interventions since 2015, the fertiliser initiative among others supported by the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority(NSIA), the star-studded Economic Advisory Council, the triplet projects (Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the 2nd Niger Bridge, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Highway), and the Mambilla Hydro Power Project, among several others.
Abba Kyari, remembered today, two years after dying in active service for Nigeria. May Allah SWT forgive his sins, accept his good deeds, and grant him Aljannah Firdaus.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
