'They knew his weak points': Gambari exposes atrocities of cabal in Buhari's govt

Former Chief of Staff to late President Muhammadu Buhari, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, has shed new light on the inner workings of the presidency, revealing how influential cabal members bypassed official protocol to smuggle memos directly to the president.

Appearing on Channels Television’s Inside Sources on Friday, July 18, Gambari disclosed, “They knew his weak moment, they knew when to smuggle (memos) because they knew him as they interacted with him informally.”

Appointed in May 2020 following the death of Abba Kyari, Gambari noted that Buhari publicly ordered all memos to pass through him.

“Even the Vice President, to his credit, always passed his memos through me… But our people still got their memos to him from behind because they knew his weak point and who to use—and he never stopped them.”

Despite this circumvention, Gambari said he was often able to retrieve the documents for proper processing.

“The advantage I had was that the memos came back to me,” he noted.

On the existence of a so-called cabal, Gambari confirmed: “They say there was a cabal—there was. Every government has a cabal. They may call them a kitchen cabinet or a think tank.”

The seasoned diplomat added, “It’s the nature of the office of the president. Some have more power than others, but every government has a cabal of some kind.”

Reflecting on Buhari's character, Gambari described him as a compassionate man who deeply cared for his appointees and Nigerians at large.

He linked the president’s reluctance to dismiss underperforming officials to this trait.

Gambari, who served as minister between 1984 and 1985 under Buhari’s military regime, also hinted that the former leader’s eventual ousting by his colleagues was partly due to his growing reliance on external advice, which military officers found threatening.