Former Chief of Staff to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, has said that some presidential aides routinely bypassed official protocol by secretly sending memos to the president, despite Buhari’s directive that all communications go through his office.
Gambari, who served as Chief of Staff between May 2020 and May 2023, made the disclosure during an interview aired Friday on Channels Television’s Inside Sources. According to him, while President Buhari publicly instructed that all memos be routed through the Chief of Staff, some insiders used their informal access to reach the president directly.
“They knew his weak moment,” Gambari said. “They knew when to smuggle [memos] because they knew him… they interacted with him informally.”
He added that despite efforts to centralise communication, Buhari often did not discourage the practice.
“He never stopped them,” Gambari noted. “But the advantage I had was that the memos came back to me.”
Gambari praised some senior officials, including then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, for respecting protocol. “Even the Vice President, to his credit, always passed his memos through me,” he said, noting that several ministers did the same.
The former Chief of Staff also addressed longstanding speculation about the existence of a powerful inner circle, often referred to as a “cabal,” during Buhari’s presidency.
He confirmed that such a group existed and described it as a feature common to all administrations.
“Every government has a cabal,” he said. “They may call them a kitchen cabinet; they may call them a think tank. But it’s the nature of the office of the president that they must have some people in and out of government whom they can let their guard down to.”
He added, “Some have more powers than others, but I’m bold to say that every government has a cabal of some kind or another.”
Reflecting on Buhari’s time as military Head of State in the 1980s, Gambari said he was not privy to the internal reasons that led to Buhari’s ouster by fellow military officers. However, he suggested that resentment over the president’s reliance on civilian advisers may have played a role.
“One of the reasons I’m told was that the military people were resenting the fact that Head of State Buhari was now getting a lot of advice and second-guessing the decisions of his military colleagues,” he said.
Gambari also commented on Buhari’s leadership style, describing him as someone who showed strong loyalty to his appointees and was hesitant to dismiss officials even under pressure. (Guardian)
