{"id":24572,"date":"2020-06-22T07:34:05","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T07:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=24572"},"modified":"2020-06-22T07:34:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T07:34:05","slug":"backstory-behind-aisha-buharis-gunfight-with-sabiu-yusuf-by-farooq-a-kperogi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=24572","title":{"rendered":"Backstory Behind Aisha Buhari\u2019s Gunfight With Sabiu Yusuf  By Farooq A. Kperogi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19271&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Gambari has turned out to be not the Abba Kyari replacement Aisha had hoped he would be. Instead, Sabi\u2019u \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, her nemesis\u2019 nephew, is the new Abba Kyari.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">By now, most people have read the story of the scuffle that occurred between Mrs. Aisha Buhari, her children, and her security aides on one hand and Sabi\u2019u \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, son of Buhari\u2019s niece who also works as his private secretary, on the other hand, which caused Aisha\u2019s ADC to shoot at Sabiu inside the Presidential Villa, narrowly missing him.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Recall that I was the first to publicly publish the names of Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s close relatives working for him in the Presidential Villa, including Sabiu Yusuf. At the time I published the names, the regime activated its online troll factory to call my revelation \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Daily Trust even refused to publish a column by Sonala Olumhense that repurposed my revelations of Buhari\u2019s close relatives working in the Villa. Now most of the names are in the open, and official communications from the presidency mentions them.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Well, Aisha\u2019s attempt on the life of Sabi\u2019u \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, a 30-something-year-old former recharge card seller in Daura who is now the third most powerful Nigerian after Buhari and Mamman Daura was a consequence of her frustration at not being able to take over power after Abba Kyari\u2019s death.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Abba Kyari was the face of the cabal made up of Mamman Daura, Samaila Isa Funtua, Babagana Kingibe, and former DSS boss Lawal Musa Daura. Kyari was almost literally Buhari\u2019s babysitter, which, as you would expect, made him Aisha\u2019s sworn enemy, although Aisha got a heck of a lot of placatory concessions and favors from him.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">When Abba Kyari contracted the coronavirus, Aisha and her children were ecstatic. The prospect of the cessation of Kyari\u2019s grip on Buhari gladdened them to no end. They were so thrilled at the thought of his death that they couldn\u2019t contain it.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">For instance, on March 24, shortly after news of Abba Kyari\u2019s coronavirus infection became public knowledge, Zahra Buhari Indimi rejoiced on Instagram. \u201cEarth is cleansing itself and it\u2019s [sic] inhabitants,\u201d she wrote. A few minutes later, she added: \u201cKarma is the most patient gangster ever.\u201d<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Several social media users\u2014 and even some traditional news organizations\u2014 noticed. PM News\u2019 headline was, \u201cZahra Buhari reacts to coronavirus after Abba Kyari tested positive.\u201d Others called it what it was: perverse mockery of Kyari for testing positive for the coronavirus.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Even before Abba Kyari died on April 17, Aisha Buhari exploited the vacuum created by his absence to exert some influence and \u201ccleanse\u201d (to use her daughter\u2019s words) the Presidential Villa of the bureaucratic vestiges of Abba Kyari. She caused Jalal Arabi, Permanent Secretary of the State House and Kyari&#8217;s slavish underling, to be redeployed from the Villa.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">In my April 18 social media intervention titled\u00a0 \u201cAbba Kyari&#8217;s Death, End of a Surrogate Presidency, and the Coming Chaos\u201d\u00a0 in the immediate aftermath of Kyari\u2019s death, I told people to \u201cWatch out for Aisha Buhari to assert herself more aggressively and to work to grab power in the fashion that Turai Yar&#8217;adua did.\u201d<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">She hasn\u2019t disappointed. After Kyari\u2019s death, she immediately got to work to get Buba Marwa appointed Chief of Staff to Buhari. Had that happened, she would have effectively taken over as president. Mamman Daura on whom Buhari has been emotionally and intellectually dependent for decades would never countenance that.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Babagana Kingibe, a member of the cabal who wanted to replace Abba Kyari as Buhari\u2019s Chief of Staff, is a notoriously treacherous wretch with whom Mamman Daura was uncomfortable. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari emerged almost fortuitously as a compromise.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">But Aisha Buhari was more enthusiastic about Gambari than Mamman Daura was. Gambari\u2019s candidacy was almost entirely pushed by Maiduguri multibillionaire Muhammadu Indimi whose son is married to Aisha\u2019s daughter, Zahra, who celebrated Abba Kyari\u2019s coronavirus infection.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Of course, Gambari is known to Buhari. Apart from serving as his minister of external affairs when he was a military dictator in the 1980s, possibly on the recommendation of Tunde Idiagbon with whom Gambari shared Ilorin identity, Gambari was drafted to speak to presidents and international bodies to lend legitimacy and credibility to Buhari in the aftermath of his in-your-face electoral heist in 2019.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Nonetheless, had Indimi not pleaded with Buhari to consider Gambari for the Chief of Staff position, he wouldn\u2019t have stood a chance. It turned out, however, that Buhari and, most importantly, Mamman Daura had not yet been totally sold on the Gambari candidacy when news of his appointment littered social media.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">A close friend to Aisha Buhari\u2019s media consultant told me that it was Aisha Buhari who commissioned his consultant to reach out to social media influencers to spread the story of Gambari\u2019s appointment. At the time I learned of this, it didn\u2019t make sense to me because I knew she wanted Buba Marwa to succeed Abba Kyari.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Then, in an unusual move, the emir of Ilorin issued a public statement thanking Buhari for appointing Ibrahim Gambari, his uncle, as Chief of Staff to the President even though Gambari had not formally been announced by the presidency as Buhari\u2019s Chief of Staff.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">When I read the emir\u2019s statement, I called an older friend of mine who is close to power brokers in the north and asked if he knew what was happening. He said some opinion leaders there had called Gambari after they read the emir\u2019s statement and asked him if he had been formally appointed.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">My friend reported Gambari to have told them that he had not been formally informed that he had been appointed Chief of Staff. I was confused. Exactly three hours later, my friend called back to say Gambari had just spoken with one of the leaders and said he had just then received word from the Villa that he had been appointed Chief of Staff to Buhari.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Apparently, realizing that her candidate wouldn\u2019t make the cut\u2014and in order to forestall the possibility of Mamman Daura imposing a candidate on her husband\u2014 Aisha decided to compel Buhari into appointing her father-in-law\u2019s candidate through artful social media manipulation.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">I don\u2019t know if she coordinated with the emir of Ilorin, but at the time the emir thanked Buhari for appointing his uncle, Buhari and Mamman Daura had not made up their minds on whom they wanted to be Buhari\u2019s Chief of Staff.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">So Buhari and Daura were dealing with three simultaneous pressures: social media chatter that Gambari had been appointed Chief of Staff when he hadn\u2019t, the emir of Ilorin\u2019s letter of gratitude for an appointment that had not been made, and Muhammadu Indimi\u2019s push on behalf of Gambari. It was too much to resist, so they caved in at the last minute.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Why is this background important to the Aso Rock gunfight? Well, it\u2019s because Daura, having been beaten by Aisha in the choice of Gambari, decided to make Sabiu \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, the son of his sister, the real Chief of Staff and a bulwark against Aisha\u2019s encroachment into Buhari\u2019s politics and policies.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">As I noted in my May 30, 2020 column titled, \u201cGambari: Embrace and Alienation of an Outsider on the Inside,\u201d\u201cunlike Abba Kyari who had a direct access to Buhari and whom Buhari said all ministers should meet if they wanted anything from him, Gambari has an intermediary between him and Buhari. And it isn\u2019t just any intermediary; the intermediary is Buhari\u2019s blood relative whom my November 23, 2019 column titled \u2018Government of Buhari\u2019s Family, By His Family, and For His Family\u2019 exposed.\u201d<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">In other words, Gambari has turned out to be not the Abba Kyari replacement Aisha had hoped he would be. Instead, Sabi\u2019u \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, her nemesis\u2019 nephew, is the new Abba Kyari. Since the \u201cEarth\u201d hasn\u2019t \u201ccleansed\u201d itself of the man like it did with Abba Kyari, she and her children wanted to do it themselves.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Sabi\u2019u\u2019s refusal to self-quarantine after potentially exposing himself to the coronavirus is, of course, a legitimate reason for Aisha Buhari to be antsy, but naked power grab is the real motive force for the animus against him.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.<\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=19271&amp;ad_type=81&amp;rl=1800\" width=\"336\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gambari has turned out to be not the Abba Kyari replacement Aisha had hoped he would be. Instead, Sabi\u2019u \u201cTunde\u201d Yusuf, her nemesis\u2019 nephew, is the new Abba Kyari. By now, most people have read the story of the scuffle that occurred between Mrs. Aisha Buhari, her children, and her security aides on one hand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[2525,3123,4736,1599,5831,5830],"class_list":["post-24572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-abba-kyari","tag-aisha-buhari","tag-babagana-kingibe","tag-mamman-daura","tag-sabiu-yusuf","tag-samaila-isa-funtua"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/aisha-buhari.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-6ok","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24573,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24572\/revisions\/24573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}