Between Osinbajo and the ‘cabal’

Th e Vice President YemiOsinbajo remains the closest adviser to President MuhammaduBuhari.

Th us, he is not fenced by any ‘cabal’, the Presidency has said.

Th e statement made by the Presidency on the matter was in reaction to a recent newspaper report which claimed that following the return of President after a 103-day medical vacation in London, the ‘cabal’ had staged a comeback, which culminated in the purported sidelining of Osinbajo.

Th e ‘cabal’ is a term used to refer to a group around the president which is believed to wield enormous powers.

But the Presidency, in a statement issued by GarbaShehu, described the report as untrue.

It said that the report contained nothing but “persistent rumours and speculations, with no other objective but to generate hatred and disgust against Buhari and his deputy.

” “To begin with, it is absolutely nonsensical and absurd to write thatin one week of the president’s return, the vice president has been sidelined,” it added, stressing that “Quite to the contrary, the vice president remains the confidante and the closest adviser to the president.

” Of course, and rightly so, the statement did not stop at the attempt to show that a good working relationship exist between the President and Osinbajo as it went ahead to say that the maligned Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, has refused to collect a monthly N200 million his predecessors in office had collected.

Agreed, these are two diff erent issues.

Yet, they are, in a significant way, closely related, making it wise on the part of the Presidency to relate them.

After all, Kyari, a close ally of the President is, more than any other person, accused of being at the head of the so-called cabal which only exists in the imagination of some ill-minded people.

There’s no doubt that Kyari is a powerful and influential member of the present administration, but the trust and confidence the President has for Kyari have simply earned Kyari his reputation.

Like many other officials of the administration, including Osinbajo, Kyari can only be accused of favouritism and selfishness and siphoning of public resources, but such allegations remain what they are, just like the officials remain trusted by the President.

It’s this trust that the President had for his officials that gave rise to many successes achieved by the administration, headed by Osinbajo during the period of his medicalvacation, and fundamentally formed the foundation upon which the administration wrests its war against corruption.

And, it needs not be said that the anti-corruption war has never and will never be popular among the nation’s elite who incidentally control the media and who are bent on creating confusion.

Th us, it is the unpatriotic elite that are behind the unfounded rumours which tend to suggest that Osinbajo has been sidelined by the imaginary cabal.

Interestingly, this was not the only time that the elite had attempted to cause crisis in the Presidency, but like in the previous times, they had also now failed to realize their selfish aim

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