Abba Kyari, his deals and rapacious attempt to grab power

A major arrow head of the Presidency cabal, who is noted for his sadistic moves aimed at a continuous hijack of powers in the Villa is the man with the ‘Red Cap’.

Before his latest onslaught against the President’s own constitutional deputy, he is known to have attacked Cabinet members either because they don’t play ball with him or simply that he doesn’t like someone’s face.

Take for example of when the Maina case broke out. The immediate past Head of Service alerted the President as the controversial and corrupt Maina was being snuck in back into the Civil Service. But the ‘Red Cap’ sat on it. Eyo-Ita then had to answer when matters became public declaring that she duly wrote the President through the Chief of Staff.

In front of cameras at the weekly FEC pre-meeting formalities, the man was seen in what were hot and frank-eye exchanges with the then Head of Service. Feeling humiliated because the woman held her own against his intimidation, the man baited her. He sent word that everything about the woman’s past be fished out until they found something to nail her. Now the woman has been humiliated and a great career destroyed.

But the case of Enelemah is more scandalous. Red Cap himself brought Enelemah, his old friend to the President. And then a N4billion project ensued. He encouraged the approval of the deal under Enelemah’s Ministry expecting a kickback. Being a Christian, Enelemah says he does not do bribes or kickbacks. Red Cap felt it was a joke. Realizing that Enelemah will not budge, he orchestrated his arrest and detention even while the Presidential campaign were hot up. It took the last minute intervention of the VP who many had believed brought in Enelemah to the cabinet to save the Minister from sleeping in a police cell in Abuja on that day. Of course, Red Cap ensures that Enelemah did not make it back to the 2nd term Cabinet.

As if this was not enough, they instead of the Vice President, actually exploited a national disaster of famine in the North East, and colluded with the now fired Director of Finance and Administration (DFA) of National Emergency Agency to execute a massive contract racket for which those NEMA officials were punished. Certainly, the removal of the DFA must have alarmed the cabal coupled with the Vice President’s leadership on the issue of removal of their figurehead Secretary General of Federation in the early days, and promotion of a new vibrant SGF that could be alternative locus of power.

What the cabal in the Villa however does well is goading competing centres of power to make mistakes. This mistake is what they leveraged in getting the President to grant blanket approval to their request to cut the Vice President’s team.  In the case of the VP, in keeping him in the blind to the point of allowing the President to release his list of aides and knowing the Vice President who will be annoyed as a result was in the habit of getting direct presidential approvals will not channel his aide list through them, they countered him by convincing the President that his team was too large and not subject to Presidential limits as a result that it needed pruning! The reduction of his duties given the new realities of an EAC replacing an EMT was the fatal blow they leveraged!

The President reportedly however only granted approval, as explained upon clarification sought by the VP, to moving only the Social Investment Program (SIP) coordinating team which  constituted the bulk of the VP’s aide, but the Chief of Staff office ran with it and started issuing instructions to the Vice President’s office on where to post his aides against time honoured Presidential tradition. Some of these instructions even referenced the inferior office of the SGF as having control of the VP’s aides, which is a compete anathema to democratic precedence.

Sensing the overreach, the Vice President decried fifth columnists at a function in a southwestern state last weekend, whose Governor interestingly has been fingered as the Chief Schemer and brain for the cabal. The said Governor is also said to be nursing a secret ambition and plan of his own to be VP to the go-between with the Lagos gang in the unlikely event of an elongation scheme for the North, which he has been promoting with the Rivers State Governor financial backing!

The story of this scheming treacherous Southwestern Governor is one for another day, as he was said to have misled a group of Progressive Governors who wanted change in the administrative machinery of the Villa before betraying them. The Governor is also said to be pursuing an alternative plan with Wike to form a party and promote an insurgence candidacy that can fly in the North assuming his primary and secondary schemes collapses the APC.

Currently, the Presidency is said to be in a state of stalemate as aides on both sides of the executive mansion are increasingly distrustful of orders the top aide of the President keeps dishing out inclusive of a claimed reshuffling of the cabinet in the absence of the President. Smartly, this newly enabled top aide always gets to convinced other officers like the SGF to sign such untoward statements while claiming to be acting on behalf of the President.

A presidential insider questioned off the record the veracity of such claims, reasoning that only written instructions of the President to the SGF could enable such reshuffling. He wondered why the President will not by himself convey such important change in his office directly to the nation and with such letter- instead of instructing the SGF to do so.