Abba Kyari: An Appeal To History On Behalf Of His Deadly Silence -By A. S. Gashinbaki

It is unfortunate that we are now living in an age of ´Al-Nasawi criticism´ where we criticize others wrongly and write of the matters we do not understand. Thanks to our ever increasing hubris, we now believed there is no way we can possibly be wrong. Our quest is no longer for the truth but the defense of our perceived intellectual positions. We do not longer care about the facts, but only what we think should be the ideal facts.

Historians are not only the custodians of the past but the future. However, on a personal level I view most histories as nothing more than the courtroom judgments of events through heresy. You can now deduce why I am deeply worried about the golden silence of Mallam Abba Kyari. The asymmetry of information regarding his person was so staggering, that at the announcement of his death even those we believed to be the most informed public affairs analysts do not even know his date of birth.

Note that Abba Kyari was not just some riff-raff politician that rigged his way into the corridors of power as most of our politicians did; but on the contrary, his credential was so rich that if possible he can be disqualified for being over qualified. Like Lord Bacon, Abba was also accused of crimes unbecoming of a man of his standing, but alas, unlike Francis Bacon, he suffered the misfortune of not being opportune to defend himself. One of such atrocious accusations is when in 2018 a man alleged on Brekete Family Radio in Abuja, that Abba together with an employee of Bureau of Public Procurement, are to share about N30 million, they collected from him in return for a certain contract award. Now, anyone who is conversant with the net worth of corrupt Nigerian politicians who call-the-shots at the federal level knows that this is the kind of accusation they will be so happy to sue at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague instead of in any Nigerian courts. But yet, Abba remained silent, while leaving the presidency to do the debunking for him.

Farouq Kperogi was opportune to clarify the man behind such an angry keyboard; Femi Adesina triumphantly concluded, I hope it serves him right´ when he berated Bayo Oluwasanmi, revealing the almost unimaginable side of his story; and Nasir El-Rufai smiled gleefully at the camera while debunking his detractors and revealing the story behind his newly grown beard. But not even Abba himself has been able to answer the question – who was Abba Kyari? I am of the firm conviction that the injustice of today need not to continue into the future. Abba was judged unjustly today, but it is our duty to prevent such reoccurrence into the future. The custodians of our posterity must understand that whatever the vilification of him they might come across in the future, lacks credibility due to absence of cross examination. Abba´s story has always been a one sided affair and it is set to remain such till eternity. Historians be warned, do not succumb to the absurd temptation of believing you can truly understand a mans nature through the depiction of others. And what is worst in this scenario is the fact that most of this depictions are from political foes. As George Orwell rightly observed, ´political languages are designed to make lies sound truthful… and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind`. They are never to be believe at face value.

Once upon a time, the very smartest among us once believed you could understand a person´s mind and character by studying the shape and size of his head – They assigned to it the funny scientific sounding name of ´Phrenology´. Of course, such absurd notion has since been dismissed as balderdash.

To our future historians – whenever you are set to write about Abba´s story, please clarify to your readers that the man Mallam Abba Kyari has never defended himself. And the version you are presenting to them is no more than heresy.