The Conversations On Agboola Gambari -By Festus Adedayo

If credentials and academic certificates/laurels approximated excellence, by now, applauses to President Muhammadu Buhari for his choice of Ibrahim Agboola Gambari as successor to the late Abba Kyari as his Chief of Staff should be reaching their crescendo. Rather, the high-caliber diplomat and academic, who studied in respected universities of the world, has literally been suffocating under torrents of heavy lacerations he receives from invectives heaped on him since the appointment. Kudos must be given to Buhari however, for the first time since he got the reins of governance five years ago, deploying the stratagems of a military officer. He sent analysts on a wild goose chase speculating as to where the successor to Kyari would come from. By the time Gambari sneaked into public consciousness, the news befuddled all, sending governmental star-gazers into a predictable frenzy.

Very few people in public space possess Gambari’s credentials. Kwara State’s Ilorin being where his umbilical-cord was buried, he holds a first degree from the London School of Economics, with specialization in International Relations and thereafter obtained a Masters and Doctoral degrees in Political Science/International Relations from Columbia University, New York. He began his international diplomacy, government and academic careers thereafter. He was Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid (1990) and got appointed as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations, while his working orbit spanned the United Nations where he held forte as first Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General in Africa, Resident Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Head of the United Nations Mission to Angola and head of the UN Department of Political Affairs between 2005 and 2007. He had earlier served as Minister for External Affairs between1984 and1985.

The above credentials should ordinarily gladden the hearts of Nigerians at a time like this when Buhari had consistently got the back of the tongues of the people for populating his government with barely capable personalities. Excited about the appointment, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, who must have supposed that with Gambari, Nigeria was tottering out of its oft flounders, congratulated Nigeria and Gambari for this appointment. Laing had written on her Twitter page: “Delighted to hear that @MBuhari has appointed the hugely experienced diplomat Professor (italics mine), Ibrahim Gambari as his new CoS.”

If reactions by the ordinary man on the street to this appointment was anything to go by, a man who was apprised of the pedigree of Gambari, the unmistakable impression you would escape with was that Buhari had just appointed into office one of the most notorious Nigerian villains. Why is this so? Before going into the intricacies of this submission, it seems to me that it is either the villainy of the government Gambari had just been appointed into had reached such a notorious cusp that he could not but appropriate of it or that Gambari possessed notoriety ab-initio and which his appointment had forced Nigerians to bring out of the scabbard.

The appointment had barely been minted out of the Aso Villa when the irrepressible Omoyele Sowore tore it into pieces. For South West Nigeria which the primus inter pares subject that could lure it into delirium was to remind it of the June 12 miss of “El-Dorado” in MKO Abiola, Sowore opened a festering sore that had refused to heal 27 years after. The hugely experienced diplomat Professor, so said Sowore, was one of the plotters of that criminal coup against democracy and the people. Hear him: Gambari, “who some people claim is an intelligent man, used his ‘intelligence’ to defend the draconian policies of the Abacha regime while he was Nigeria’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations. He was one of Abacha’s equivalents of the “Goebel,” representing the infamous dictator with vigor and a propensity that could only be found in fascist Italy of old. He was once quoted as saying, ‘Nigerians don’t need democracy because democracy is not food. It is not their priority now.’ As more pressure mounted on the Abacha regime from all corners of the world, Professor Gambari became more notorious and ruthless in defending and deflecting attacks against the Abacha dictatorship.”

Like one whose wound had just been stomped upon, Sowore got, especially Southern Nigeria, into a frenzy. Those who didn’t know who the commissars of that calamitous political moment in Nigeria were, were reminded of Gambari’s ignoble role. Then came Ambassador Dapo Fafowora. Excerpting from his book, Lest I forget: Memoirs of Nigerian Career Diplomat, Fafowora added to the credential of an enabler of despotism which Sowore tagged Gambari with. He literally labeled him a Judas who specialized in treachery and hewing down trees he climbed to the top. He concluded by saying that, “the result of (these) capricious and vengeful retirements that took place under the watch of Gambari is that the fine Foreign Service we had, of which we were all proud, was wantonly destroyed. Gambari played a leading role in this ugly episode. I don’t expect anything better from him as CoS.”

So many others have related unpleasant experiences under Gambari’s watch. Before now, he was said to have been a prominent member of the Buhari cabal who determined the temperature of governance in the last five years. Aware of the dissembling voices of a mob targeting to cut down an offending tree, I really do not want to make a foray into Gambari’s governmental pedigree which has been painted as a let-down. It is however bemusing that the same Gambari who is perceived as undesirable, was same man after the heart of the international community. To imagine that an international community which denounces tyranny of the Abacha hue, is same community that has consistently given Gambari spots to flower from one season to another, taking him on diplomatic shuttles around the world on international appointments, looks like an equivocation.

While speaking with the press in his maiden interview at the Villa, Gambari was quoted to have said that his loyalty was to Buhari and not to the public. Which is the creed of that office. If Buhari succeeds in bonding with the people, Gambari may end up being a doyen of the people. Depending on how he is able to gauge the mood of his principal and swim along its currents, Gambari may be a success in office. However, no one needs to use a spiritual telescope to submit that he would be a huge failure in office. This is because, the pedigree of an infernal but abiding allegiance to a caucus creed and the Fulani ethnic question that are said to be the prevailing bother of his governmental sojourn will surely haunt him. As he was said to have done while Abacha held sway, Gambari will again articulate the cronyism of the Buhari government, in the bid to “be loyal to my principal.” He will see no wrong in its timid or nil attempt to fight the scourge of poverty that grips the throat of the country and will undoubtedly give official imprimatur to government’s laid-back disposition to changing the status-quo.

By 2023, God-willing, Agboola Gambari will go home a successful chief of the staff of Buhari, preparatory to going on another junket of assignments for the international community. He would, however, have elasticized his credentials as the hugely experienced diplomat Professor who gives soft landing to governments seen as haters of the people.