The last time I spoke to Mallam Abba Kyari was in the evening of 29 March 2020. He was on the way to the airport to board that flight to Lagos. He had shared a statement on WhatsApp, which I wanted to confirm was for public consumption. He said sure, and I prayed again for his quick recovery. In that press statement, he had expressed the hope of being back to his desk soon. That was vintage him, a workhorse who approached his brief with near missionary and clear patriotic zeal. Alas, it was not meant to be. That was his last public statement, that day was the last day I had the privilege of talking to him, and the last time he responded to messages. That flight was his last flight alive. A good man, so widely misunderstood and deliberately misrepresented but fiercely loyal to President Muhammadu Buhari and to Nigeria, is gone. A good man is gone. Gone home.I woke up on Saturday to the sad news of his passing, completely gutted. It was the least expected outcome, for the news we had received even on Friday evening was that he was getting much better. But the Maker decided to draw the curtain. We can’t question God. Allahu a’lam. Besides, every soul shall taste death. Mallam Abba has just gone the way of all mortals. All his family and loved ones can do now is pray for him and hold on to fond memories. For me, as I reflected on Saturday over countless conversations and encounters over a nine-year period, the overwhelming sadness of his passing is relieved by an overpowering memory of the good man I had come to know beyond the tendentious caricature energetically sold in the public space in the last four-plus years. (Full-disclosure: he head-hunted me for my present job, and he went the whole length to ensure I was appointed by the President. He did this for more than quit a few across the manufactured ethnic and religious divides of our country.)Despite the constant demonization of his person, I have not come across many in the public space in Nigeria that boast of the intensity, the passion, the meticulousness, and the selflessness of Mallam Abba. As the number one aide and envoy of President Buhari, he constantly preoccupied himself with how to make Nigeria work for all, especially for the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. (Some mistook this preoccupation as socialism, a dirty word in some circles but the Chief I knew was a pragmatist, hardly wedded to an ideology). Unlike previous holders of his office, he held strong opinions and expressed them strongly, and he happen to know a lot about many things on account of education and diverse background as a lawyer, journalist and banker. He also took his job as the gatekeeper to the President very seriously, always insisting that a core part of his job was to ensure that the President had a rounded view of things, and not misled by Nigeria’s legendary predatory elite (yes, I can confirm that he had a thing for the Nigerian elite whom he interacted with a lot from his vantage position, and he was fond of saying he had not seen a set of elite that hated their country as much as ours).To be sure, a Chief of Staff having a strong public view and an obvious role in policy and governance was new to our clime and jarring to many, especially to political actors. Legitimate questions could be raised about how an unelected official could be so powerful. But these should also be clear to the open minded: the power exercised by an aide could only be delegated power and an aide could only be as powerful as his principal wants her to be. What could not be disputed was that Mallam Abba enjoyed the trust of his principal and he in turn reciprocated that with unalloyed loyalty. He put all the intellect and muscle he could muster at the service of his principal, and by extension his country. I also know for a fact that his legendary influence was exaggerated. A sizeable number of his ideas or the ideas he bought into didn’t see the light of day, which is not uncommon. But he was always ready to take the bullet. That is what loyal aides, especially Chiefs of Staff, do.
