Those Who Shaped The Buhari Presidency

By Chuks Aguonye

The victory of President Muhammadu Buhari at the polls in 2015 was a product of the effort of a rainbow coalition that had at its head the president himself and now President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the two leaders of the leading parties that formed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). To concretise the alliance the Tinubu wing produced the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

However, the Buhari presidency that resulted from that electoral victory was not a reflection of that alliance. In fact the expectations were that the Tinubu wing would play a leading role and run the administration with its famed ‘competence’ at building effective teams. Instead, once the President was sworn in, the new Buhari Presidency was one that formed in his image: it was sectional, some say nepotistic, and seems to have a predetermined set of goals, many of which conflated with the national aspirations of the APC.

President Buhari was always not a very sociable person and so there is little anyone could say about his friends or associates outside of his northern region, especially for a president, who as a former military ruler was not visible at any major event until he started running for president. It is not by accident therefore that most of the key persons who played a role in his regime are related to him by family. A few others are not family but grew into his confidence.

The following are the major people that defined the Buhari Presidency.

Abba Kyari

Abba Kyari was a surprise pick for Chief of Staff to the President when he was appointed in August 2015. A lawyer and former bank executive, he was not visible on the campaign trail and clearly not known as a Buhari acolyte until his appointment. Yet, once appointed he exerted a heavy influence on the administration.

Kyari, who hailed from Borno State, was born on September 23rd 1952.

He was educated in some of the best schools in the UK and the US and started out as a journalist before making the detour to public service and banking. He joined the UBA later and became the chief executive before retiring. Upon leaving UBA after the sale of the bank to Tony Elumelu’s Standard Trust Bank, he served in the board of some public companies but stayed out of public view, until he made the surprise appointment in Buhari’s cabinet, where he was widely considered to be the most powerful person in the Buhari Presidency.

Kyari was prominent in deciding the policy imperatives of the administration and was generally seen as the face of the so-called cabal that ran the presidency. He was linked to the appointment of many persons in the first cabinet. In the president’s second term, Kyari was reappointed and this time was clearly placed as the unofficial ‘prime minister’ in the presidency with a directive that all Ministers pass their memos through his office. That directive no doubt was because of the dispute Kyari had with some tio officers of the administration such as the Head of Civil Service and the National Security Adviser who accused him of stretching his spheres of influence to their briefs.

Kyari died from Covid-19 complications in 2020. His death was said to have adversely affected the smooth functioning of the Buhari Presidency. However he soon found someone to occupy the office but without the clout of Kyari.

Bola Tinubu

President elect Bola Tinubu, then National leader of the APC, was a necessary evil for Buhari. Not quite comfortable with the Lagos politician’s influence and tactics, some say charm, Buhari held Tinubu at arm’s length but feared his capacity for organisation and mobilisation. So, though he was assured of reasonable influence in the Government, his ministerial nominations were rejected by Buhari in 2015, preferring to appoint his known associates who he did not nominate. That was seen as an affront but Tinubu maintained a straight face and acted like a major player in the Government, defending its policies and failures, and earning the trust that overwhelmed the cabal in the Presidency and handed him the APC ticket. That he got the ticket without the overt support, rather covert opposition from the president and his Presidency, is testament to Tinubu’s power and influence in the APC under Buhari, even if his imprints are difficult to find in the everyday running of the Government.

Tinubu is however credited with the appointments of some people in the Government, among them Babachir Lawal and Boss Mustapha.

Aisha Buhari

The woman in ‘the Other Room’, as President Buhari classified the place of his wife, was no ordinary housewife. She was a politically active woman with an eye on building a legacy for her husband.

It is a credit to First Lady Aisha Buhari that she was outspoken against those she claimed had captured her husband and made him lose his pro-people bent, while those who did not work for his victory were calling the shots. Aisha challenged Nigerians to fight what she called the “two or three people who have dominated this government”.

In her words, while speaking at a leadership summit in 2018: “Our votes were 15.4 million in the last elections and after that only for us to be dominated by two people… this is totally unacceptable.”

“If 15.4 million people can bring in a government and only for the government to be dominated by two people or three people, where are the men of Nigeria? Where are the Nigerian men? What are you doing? Instead of them to come together and fight them, they keep visiting them one after the other licking their shoes (I’m sorry to use those words).” The president however dismissed the allegations.

However, while that seems plausible, political insiders also say that it was her own way of building clout and forcing the hand of her husband on some issues that affected her and her children in the Presidency.

She was definitely not an outsider inside as she was named as being key to certain appointments made by the President and some issues over which progress was stalled, including the intractable abnegation of the NDDC Act in 2019 when an illegal Interim Management Committee was appointed rather than the board confirmed by the Senate.

Mamman Daura

Mamman Daura is seen as one of the silent powers directing the bureaucracy of the Buhari Presidency. Born in Daura in 1939, he is the son of Muhammadu Buhari’s elder brother. A highly trained administrator who worked in the colonial administration and studied abroad. A former newspaper editor, he co-founded Funtua Textiles Limited alongside Alhaji Ismaila Isa Funtua, another key player in the Buhari Presidency until he died some years ago.

Daura is President Muhammadu Buhari’s ‘powerful nephew’, a position which did not come by error.

Though Daura is about three years older than the president, they have a close relationship based on the fact that they had been playmates growing up and when the president relocated to the Presidential Villa Aso Rock in 2015, following his election as Nigeria’s president, he invited Daura to stay with him. It is not difficult to see why Aisha saw the Mamman Daura family as a threat to her in Aso Rock, as expressed in the disagreement she had with the family over their stay at The Glass House. Though it was given to them by the president, Aisha worked to have them moved out since the building is close to the main living quarters of the president.

Speaking on the relationship between her father and the president, Daura’s daughter, Fatima, told the BBC Hausa Service in 2020 that both of them had been very close and did things in common. According to her, while they are close, he was not a member of any kitchen cabinet. In her words, “… they (Buhari and Daura) grew up together, shared the same friends and did a lot of things together, so if any one is appointed that is close to our dad, that person is also close to the president. They have been together and they do things together. Everyone has his own confidant that he listens to. I think that is the reason for the allegations. They are very close friends. They are also related by blood so there is no way you can separate them.”

“You know the president can seek his advice but he is not the kind of fellow that will impose or insist on something. He can simply advise and stay away at home minding his business. He hardly speaks, he is 80 years old. When you talk to him about the allegations, he says you should not bother yourselves, that God is clearing his sins by such false accusations. If you are reasonable, you will see that the powers being allotted to our father by his accusers are wrong. It is only God that has such powers. It doesn’t make sense.”

Ahmed Joda

Ahmed belonged to the class of the federal super permanent secretaries of the 1960s who moved on to become icons of the federal civil service. He was the Head of Buhari’s transition committee in 2015 and though no particular negative report has been attributed to him, he was said to be consulted occasionally by Buhari until his passing in 2021.

Ismaila Isa Funtua

Ismaila Isa Funtua, born in January 1942, journalist, publisher and businessman was a Federal Minister in the Second Nigerian Republic. He was a close associate of Buhari’s nephew Mamman Daura and also a close player in the Buhari Presidency until his passing on July 20th, 2020 of heart complications.

Wikipedia describes him as “a long time personal friend and close associate of President Muhammadu Buhari; and was a very influential figure in the Buhari administration. He was also a prominent member of the infamous Kaduna Mafia, a loose group of Nigerian businessmen, civil servants, intellectuals and military officers from Northern Nigeria.”

Aside from these individuals, Buhari was believed to operate on a principle of confidence in old allies, no matter how jaded they are. Without a clear programme of action and agenda, these were capable of affecting the direction of the president and they did.