It's been a mixed bag of reactions following the announcement of Nigeria's Chief of Staff's passing away after battling coronavirus for weeks. From those who eulogize with the deceased, to those who see Kyari's death as an answered prayer. But like it is said in politics, ' there's no permanent enemy, but permanent interests'.
A good example of the above saying, is former minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode who mourned Kyari in a matter which left some of his followers bemused, and resorted to attacking him for a daring to call Kyari 'his brother' and a 'good man'.
His full response can be found below;
Yesterday I paid tribute to my friend and brother Mallam Abba Kyari, the former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, who passed on after being diagnosed with Covid 19 on Friday 17th April 2020.
The tweet reads as follows:
"I lost a friend of 40 years. We were at Cambridge together. We worked in my fathers law firm together. We remained close throughout right up until the end even though we disagreed politically. ABBA was a good man. A man of honor and a loyal friend. May his soul rest in peace".
Someone DIED and you are now suggesting that it is wrong for those of us that knew him better than you to say a good word about him? This is an accomplished man who was a lawyer, a banker, a journalist, a businessman and a loyal friend to many many years before he even joined Government in 2015. This is a man with children, a wife, an extended family and many dependants that he left behind.
This is a man that has been a blessing to his community and that has been housing, feeding and paying for the education of thousands of students at Maiduguri University and offering scholarships to so many young people since 2001.
I forgive those that have attacked me for their ignorance and I stand by my words. If they do not like those words they can simply go and jump in the lagoon. They like me when I attack Government but they hate me when I say one good thing about a Government official who I have known for over forty years? What a joke!
Yet the truth is that I do not care one way or the other and neither do I seek anyone's approval or validation. I will attack anoyone that I believe has done wrong, whether in the ranks of the Government or the opposition, and I will commend those that I believe have done their best in either of the two.
Yet even if I didn't, common decency alone should constrain them to at least let those of us that have a certain degree of decency and humanity left in our persona to express our condolences in peace and not choose our words for us or be subjected to vulgar abuse, intolerable rantings and long and uncontrollable diatribes from a clearly diseased mind.
To you I say the following. If you don't like my views about Kyari you can simply go to hell. I do not give a fig. I would however advise you to fear God and know that even He does not take pleasure in the death of those He created and only He can judge each and every one of us.
Yet for the record let us look at a few of the facts.
A former Head of State would have been put under house arrest in 2018, a former Chief of Army Staff and Minister of Defence would have been arrested in 2018, a former National Security Advisor and a well known online publisher would have still been in detention today and many MORE people would have been detained and killed had it not been for the efforts and moderating influence of this man whose untimely death some irresponsible people are celebrating today.
Let me give you two examples. He promised the Governors of the East that he would get adequate funding for Enugu Airport and he did.
He also promised to ensure that good progress would be made on the second Niger bridge and it was. I can tell you that had it not been for his efforts and the efforts of particularly Governor Umahi of Ebonyi and the Governor Ugwanyi of Enugu it would have been next to impossible to get adequate funding for the two.
I know because I was involved and I asked them all to intervene. On that occassion they saved lives and I can bear witness to that. So can Ejiofor.
There is so much more that I could add but I will go no further for now because it was not Abba's desire or intention to be praised or publicly acknowledged for his good deeds. He neither craved public validation or acclaim.
People forget that the buck for the things the Federal Government does not stop at the desk of the President's Chief of Staff but at the desk of the President. He takes full credit for the good things and he must also take the full blame for the bad .
Despite that he was quite happy to be labelled as this Government's "Dark Angel" and "fall guy", even though both tags were totally inaccurate and inappropriate 0 He was also quite prepared to take the blame for every evil under the sun simply because he was deeply loyal to the President.
Nevermind that much of the time he was fighting off those in the Government who hated his guts and who saw him as a stumbling block to gaining unmerited favour with the President or to their thieving ways.
I know every single one of them and at the appropriate time I will expose them for what they are. Abba was far better than them: far more wholesome and far more decent. He was a gentleman who though, in my view, was on the wrong side of the political divide, remained a gentleman nevertheless.
His defence was that he believed in Buhari and that he chose to be loyal to him and I respected that. He often reminded me of the days in which I was at the Villa when I stood by President Olusegun Obasanjo no matter what.
He said that even though he was with Buhari throughout that time and was opposed to Obasano we still remained friends and that we ought to remain friends now that the tables had turned and that he and his principal were in power.
This was sound logic and it made sense. Only a fool does not appreciate the fact that true friendship transcends politics and that you take your friends warts and all even when, in your view, they may have made the wrong political choices.
I have been in the frontline of the opposition and resistance since 2015 and no-one has fought or risked as much against this Government as I have done. I have been detained, maligned, insulted, subjected to psychological torture, misrepresented, falsely and wrongly accused, financially crippled and worse of all I have lost some members of my family and friends because of them.
They have taken literally everything from me and have destroyed the country that I have always loved and seen as my own. All of this I have suffered without ever complaining or lamenting leaving my fate and that of my family and loved ones to God.
We will no longer have anyone to complain to about the excesses and sheer brutality of some of the security and intelligence officials. We will no longer have someone to run to when terrible things are being done that even the President is not aware of.
Continue to celebrate his death because you are ignorant and uninformed. When the real monster arrives and rises up that is when your eyes will clear and you will wish that the one you hate was still alive and in power.
He was obviously very upset by my generous and charitable words about a man who he perceived as being pure evil and who he believed ought to have been categorised as an enemy of humanity and the tormentor-in chief of the Nigerian people. He wrote,
"When Boko Haram members were killing men and children in thousands, raping women in large proportions. Killing and shooting Biafra citizens, Shiites members and those who oppose his Government, did Abba Kyari speak up?
Did he call for the service chiefs to resign? Did he visit those who died? When Buhari deliberately and intentionally borrowed predatory loans from the Foreign nations to further plunge Nigerian into insurmountable debts? Did Abba speak up? How about the billions of Naira that were allocated to upgrade Aso rock Clinic that went Missing, did he speak up?
Do you know how many thousands of Nigerians are dying every month due to the wicked and heartless intentions of these beasts and Frankenstein monsters? Even, if he did not speak up, did he resign? Truth to be told whatever a man sows he shall reap".
My response to him was as follows.
"If only you knew how many lives he saved. If only you knew how he at least attempted to build bridges between Christians and Muslims and between northerners and southerners behind closed doors.
If only you knew how hard he fought to ensure that the war against terror was properly waged. If only you knew the forces that opposed his moderate stand from within.
If only you knew that most of the rubbish being written in the media about him was being sponsored and spread to a gullible public by key members of the Buhari administrstion who were trying to discredit him and get the Presideht to fire him.
Simply put had it not been for him many more lives would have been lost in the war against terror and many more people would have been killed by Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen.
A cabal that has been in existence and in power since the 1980's when he was still at University? This does not make sense. He was a powerful Chief of Staff but he was far from being head of the cabal or being de facto President. That much I can assure you.
If it had been any different many of those that were still in office at the time of his death would not have been there anymore because he would have fired them long ago.
God alone sees the heart and knows who is who. Let Him be the judge and let Him call each and every one of us to account for our deeds and misdeeds.
For my friend and adversary Abba I only have this to say,
"Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.....How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!" (2 Samuel 1 20:24).
Rest in peace my brother and pray for Nigeria and those of us you left behind.