HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN


Late Mallam Abba Kyari, Former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari

Insults mean nothing to me. They only fuel my resolve and strengthen my determination. They are like water off a duck’s back and neither can they deter me from speaking my mind on any pressing or burning issue no matter how unpopular my position may be.

Those that do not have the prescence of mind or the discipline to read beyond three lines or that are so filled with hate and blighted by ignorance that it has beclouded their better judgement should not bother attempting to read this contribution.

For those that are interested in knowing the truth and in actually learning something about a man that was as maligned, misrepresented and misunderstood as I have been over the years should please go ahead and do me the honor of reading it. Whichever way it takes absolutely nothing from me.

Yesterday I paid tribute to my friend and brother Mallam Abba Kyari, the former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, who passed on after being diagnosed with Covid 19 on Friday 17th April 2020.


President Olusegun Obasanjo

The tweet reads as follows:

“I lost a friend of 40 years. We were at Cambridge together. We worked in my fathers law firm together. We remained close throughout right up until the end even though we disagreed politically. ABBA was a good man. A man of honor and a loyal friend. May his soul rest in peace”.

Sadly it appears that some have a problem with my tribute and have lost all sense of decency and humanity.

Someone DIED and you are now suggesting that it is wrong for those of us that knew him better than you to say a good word about him? This is an accomplished man who was a lawyer, a banker, a journalist, a businessman and a loyal friend to many many years before he even joined Government in 2015. This is a man with children, a wife, an extended family and many dependants that he left behind.

This is a man that has been a blessing to his community and that has been housing, feeding and paying for the education of thousands of students at Maiduguri University and offering scholarships to so many young people since 2001.


President Muhammadu Buhari

All this yet you say that those of us that knew him must not mourn him. Some even went as far as to ask how dare I say he was a “good man” forgetting that if he had been anything less I would have been the first to expose and attack him.

I forgive those that have attacked me for their ignorance and I stand by my words. If they do not like those words they can simply go and jump in the lagoon. They like me when I attack Government but they hate me when I say one good thing about a Government official who I have known for over forty years? What a joke!

Yet the truth is that I do not care one way or the other and neither do I seek anyone’s approval or validation. I will attack anoyone that I believe has done wrong, whether in the ranks of the Government or the opposition, and I will commend those that I believe have done their best in either of the two.

The truth is that when it comes to the gathering of information and acquisition of knowledge and what is really going on behind closed doors in this country I know far more than virtually all of my traducers because I have access to people and places that most of them can only dream about.


Gen. TY Danjuma Rtd.

Yet even if I didn’t, common decency alone should constrain them to at least let those of us that have a certain degree of decency and humanity left in our persona to express our condolences in peace and not choose our words for us or be subjected to vulgar abuse, intolerable rantings and long and uncontrollable diatribes from a clearly diseased mind.

To you I say the following. If you don’t like my views about Kyari you can simply go to hell. I do not give a fig. I would however advise you to fear God and know that even He does not take pleasure in the death of those He created and only He can judge each and every one of us.

Yet for the record let us look at a few of the facts.

A former Head of State would have been put under house arrest in 2018, a former Chief of Army Staff and Minister of Defence would have been arrested in 2018, a former National Security Advisor and a well known online publisher would have still been in detention today and many MORE people would have been detained and killed had it not been for the efforts and moderating influence of this man whose untimely death some irresponsible people are celebrating today.

I know all this and about each case because I was involved. Once that man gave his word on any issue he always honored it to the point that even the reactionaries and hardliners in the Government he served wanted to discredit him, implicate him, get rid of him and even kill him.


Mamman Daura

Let me give you two examples. He promised the Governors of the East that he would get adequate funding for Enugu Airport and he did.

He also promised to ensure that good progress would be made on the second Niger bridge and it was. I can tell you that had it not been for his efforts and the efforts of particularly Governor Umahi of Ebonyi and the Governor Ugwanyi of Enugu it would have been next to impossible to get adequate funding for the two.

I can also tell you that when the police, with elements of the military, attacked and killed IPOB youths and literally burnt down half of Orifite in Anambra state, the hometown of my friend and IPOB lawyer, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Abba, in collaboration with Umahi and Ugwanyi, was instrumental in putting a stop to it.

I know because I was involved and I asked them all to intervene. On that occassion they saved lives and I can bear witness to that. So can Ejiofor.

There is so much more that I could add but I will go no further for now because it was not Abba’s desire or intention to be praised or publicly acknowledged for his good deeds. He neither craved public validation or acclaim.


Zagon Daura

People forget that the buck for the things the Federal Government does not stop at the desk of the President’s Chief of Staff but at the desk of the President. He takes full credit for the good things and he must also take the full blame for the bad .

Abba was merely an official albeit a very senior and influential one: he was not the leader of the cabal or the de facto President that many claimed that he was.

Despite that he was quite happy to be labelled as this Government’s “Dark Angel” and “fall guy”, even though both tags were totally inaccurate and inappropriate 0 He was also quite prepared to take the blame for every evil under the sun simply because he was deeply loyal to the President.

Nevermind that much of the time he was fighting off those in the Government who hated his guts and who saw him as a stumbling block to gaining unmerited favour with the President or to their thieving ways.


Ismaila Isa Funtua

I know every single one of them and at the appropriate time I will expose them for what they are. Abba was far better than them: far more wholesome and far more decent. He was a gentleman who though, in my view, was on the wrong side of the political divide, remained a gentleman nevertheless.

I found it inexplicable and difficult to accept that a man that was as sophisticated, cosmopolitan, enlightened and intelligent as ABBA was could work for a Government and be Chief of Staff in a Presidency that was the most sectional and religiously biased in the history of Nigeria and I often told him this. We had many heated discussions and lively debates on this and other issues.

His defence was that he believed in Buhari and that he chose to be loyal to him and I respected that. He often reminded me of the days in which I was at the Villa when I stood by President Olusegun Obasanjo no matter what.

He said that even though he was with Buhari throughout that time and was opposed to Obasano we still remained friends and that we ought to remain friends now that the tables had turned and that he and his principal were in power.


Lawal Daura

This was sound logic and it made sense. Only a fool does not appreciate the fact that true friendship transcends politics and that you take your friends warts and all even when, in your view, they may have made the wrong political choices.

He felt I that I made the wrong choice and chose the wrong path just as I felt that he did but we never for one moment felt that our friendship should or would end because of that. After all we were not just friends but we were brothers.

I have been in the frontline of the opposition and resistance since 2015 and no-one has fought or risked as much against this Government as I have done. I have been detained, maligned, insulted, subjected to psychological torture, misrepresented, falsely and wrongly accused, financially crippled and worse of all I have lost some members of my family and friends because of them.

They have taken literally everything from me and have destroyed the country that I have always loved and seen as my own. All of this I have suffered without ever complaining or lamenting leaving my fate and that of my family and loved ones to God.


Omoyele Sowore

I have nothing to gain and no reason to sugar-coat anyone in the Buhari administration but let me tell you loudly and clearly that now that the man you all loved to hate and malign has gone you will see the true meaning of tyranny and a totalitarian government because we will no longer have a moderate to run to when innocent men and women are being incarcerated, killed or tormented.

We will no longer have anyone to complain to about the excesses and sheer brutality of some of the security and intelligence officials. We will no longer have someone to run to when terrible things are being done that even the President is not aware of.

Continue to celebrate his death because you are ignorant and uninformed. When the real monster arrives and rises up that is when your eyes will clear and you will wish that the one you hate was still alive and in power.

Permit me to conclude this contribution with the following. Canelo Gypsy King, one of my numerous young friends on Facebook wrote the following to me after watching my interview on AIT about ABBA.


Sambo Dasuki

He was obviously very upset by my generous and charitable words about a man who he perceived as being pure evil and who he believed ought to have been categorised as an enemy of humanity and the tormentor-in chief of the Nigerian people. He wrote,

“When Boko Haram members were killing men and children in thousands, raping women in large proportions. Killing and shooting Biafra citizens, Shiites members and those who oppose his Government, did Abba Kyari speak up?

Did he call for the service chiefs to resign? Did he visit those who died? When Buhari deliberately and intentionally borrowed predatory loans from the Foreign nations to further plunge Nigerian into insurmountable debts? Did Abba speak up? How about the billions of Naira that were allocated to upgrade Aso rock Clinic that went Missing, did he speak up?

When Buhari failed to address the Nation every month for years, Did Abba speak up? Did he ever speak up when the nation was financially pillaged by these evil Government officials?


Ifeanyi Ejiofor

Do you know how many thousands of Nigerians are dying every month due to the wicked and heartless intentions of these beasts and Frankenstein monsters? Even, if he did not speak up, did he resign? Truth to be told whatever a man sows he shall reap”.

My response to him was as follows.

“If only you knew how many lives he saved. If only you knew how he at least attempted to build bridges between Christians and Muslims and between northerners and southerners behind closed doors.

If only you knew how hard he fought to ensure that the war against terror was properly waged. If only you knew the forces that opposed his moderate stand from within.

If only you knew how much he was hated by some very key members of the Buhari administration who envied him and who felt that had it not been for him they could have pillaged the treasury far more than they were already doing and created even more enemies for the President than he already had.


Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President of Nigeria

If only you knew that most of the rubbish being written in the media about him was being sponsored and spread to a gullible public by key members of the Buhari administrstion who were trying to discredit him and get the Presideht to fire him.

Simply put had it not been for him many more lives would have been lost in the war against terror and many more people would have been killed by Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen.

Some say he was the leader of the cabal. This is a cabal in which seasoned and skillful old war horses and elderly and ancient northern political veterans and warriors like Mamman Daura, Zangon Daura, Mahmoud Tukur, Ismaila Isa Funtua, Lawal Daura, Baba Gana Kingibe and many others that were far older and more experienced than him are members of?

A cabal that has been in existence and in power since the 1980’s when he was still at University? This does not make sense. He was a powerful Chief of Staff but he was far from being head of the cabal or being de facto President. That much I can assure you.


Babagana Ali Monguno, National Security Adviser

If it had been any different many of those that were still in office at the time of his death would not have been there anymore because he would have fired them long ago.

God alone sees the heart and knows who is who. Let Him be the judge and let Him call each and every one of us to account for our deeds and misdeeds.

It is not for me or anyone else to judge Kyari and it is not for anyone else to judge me or to judge you. The only thing that is certain is the following: for our good deeds we shall be rewarded in the afterlife and for our bad ones we shall suffer. That applies to us all and as the Bible says, ‘let he that is free of sin throw the first stone’ “.

For my friend and adversary Abba I only have this to say,

“Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice…..How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished!” (2 Samuel 1 20:24).

You served your nation and your principal to the best of your ability and I am proud of the dignity and nobility you displayed throughout your life.

Rest in peace my brother and pray for Nigeria and those of us you left behind.

28 thoughts on “HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN”

  1. Onyemaechi Daniel

    Behind the doors…..
    This revelation is way more than an average citizen can get to know. Thank you sir for your decency. You are quit a model.

  2. I have this sense of feeling that now abba is dead, the devil might be unveiled, I’m not a fan of his and will never be no matter what anyone writes but i still believe that this man isn’t the problem of the country inasmuch as majority thinks, we all will understand better soon if God doesn’t intervene, because i feel that he’s gone for the demons to be unveiled…

  3. Hmm it’s well, God should please hear our cry and fight for the masses. God should plz scatter and destroy every member of the cabal that are causing us sorrow in Nigeria..

  4. This piece is really epic, hard to believe, but for the love of humanity and existence…. I will title it, “The many good sides of ABBA we never knew.”

    Continue the good work you’ve been doing my friend and brother FFK.

  5. Revd Canon CHIDI UKACHUKWU

    I am quite enlightened by this. Granted that I have never celebrated and will never celebrate the death of any human being, but I wrongly held the opinion that the CoS was responsible and in support of whatever we see wrong in this administration simply because I believe that President Buhari is too old to coordinate well.

    I saw products of caps, T-Shirt and others suggesting his intention to run for president ain 2023. How true

    Thank you so much Chief Fani-Kayode for your frankness and sincerity of purpose. Be assured of our prayers. God bless you and your family.
    CanonCHIDI+

  6. Christiana Ugor

    Let God alone who sees the heart and knows who is who judge each and every one of us to account for our deeds and misdeeds.

  7. Well, quite revealing was the article just like a seasoned movie, thoughts and suspicions are suspended as events unfold. I am not a fan of this govt and never of the late Chief of Staff, I knew nothing about him other than he was an influential member of the govt. Whichever way, I salute your courage and dogged spirit in the pursuit for what you believe in.

  8. Comrade OnyekaChukwu

    I felt a cold running through my veins simultaneously … I never knew he was an Angel in disguise. Permit to tender my apologizes to his family and Friends…

  9. All said and done, I have read articles written by these eminent people about Malam Aba Kayri and articles said much about the late COS to the President. Together with the articles was the comment made by Mr. President which was in consonance with the articles written by Comrade Aliu Oshiomole, Chief Femi Fanikayode and the Minister of foreign Affairs . They all knew the late Malam Aba Kayri for more than 40 years in his existence on this Earth. May God in His infinite.mercy grant him Aljana. Amen.

  10. Thank you Chief Femi Kayode. There is no doubt the fact that you know much more than many as far as the who is who and who is what in the tyranny that engulfed this nation since 2015 is concerned. but one thing is pertinent that you also should remember ‘that he who plays the host to spirits is the one from whom they will demand kola ‘ -lbo proverb .Thus,I assert the following facts
    1. I do not disagree with you as regards your in debt knowledge and understanding of the cabals in this country and their composition but one thing we know is this; Abba is one of them and very prominent one at that .
    2. you speak from your personal and private experience with him but we see differently ; from the perspective of the public assessment of the government in which he is a major actor.
    3. The death of Abba should serve as lesson to every one that threads the corridor of power that ‘in every institution of government God is and still rules in the kingdom of men’.

  11. Well ffk, there’s nothing to worry about as a yoruba man that you’re, and looking at your judgment of the man Abba Kyari as a good man and your consideration of the closure of the only international airport in the east in the name of repair works at the Enugu international airport as a favor done to Igbo Biafrans, a work that has been abandoned a long time ago, and the second Niger bridge as a favor too which we don’t deserve as a people but was favored by Abba Kyari, and the unprovoked killing and burning of our people who gathered to peacefully bury their loved one at Oraifite Anambra state by the police and Nigerian army, without anybody been held responsible or prosecuted for that heinous crime till date, is also a favor done to us by your brother and friend Abba Kyari, all these indeed is a testimony of your love and sound mind of friendship with the IPOB Biafrans and of your sound intellectual ability and standpoint as a yoruba person and a Blackman. We’ve heard what you said, how it’s all a favor from your brother and friend Abba Kyari to spare our lives inthe east Biafra land even when we’ve not committed any crime or anything known to law for incarceration or death, but must be arrested incarcerated and killed if your likes and that of your brother and friend Abba Kyari decide not to intervene, this we’ve come to know this day, and we say thanks for seeing us IPOB Biafrans and for taking us the way you do, this also we’ve taken to mind, and shall never ever forget.

  12. Robert Oto-Obong

    The best person to testify of anyone is his or her friends besides a spouse and children. You have justified your conscience and has paid the last respect to your beloved friend. Let the Almighty justifies both the living and the death.

  13. Defender Gambo

    Good morning sir, I can say thank you for what you said or seems to be good about ABBA. But sir, my question to you here is, WHY SAYING IT NOW? You could have done that since, for we or the nation to know that, yes we really have a STRONG man like him (ABBA) in the govt. So there’s no way for us to appreciates and thanks him now. That’s where I considered it to be LATE. THANK YOU SIR.

  14. Abdullahi Suleiman

    A very good tribute to him,the truth of the matter is that no one knows about him till after reading this piece.He hardly talks in public or to press men.We see him frankly as ‘slow poison’.
    Good knows who is having good or bad heart,for now his deeds will speak for him.
    Thanks for making us to know some hidden facts.

  15. Only results count not effort.
    Remember, the voice of the people is the voice of God!
    He could mean good but we only see evil outcome. Only God knows the heart. Even devil knowth not the intentions of man.
    Rest on!

  16. The rable we saw at the burial of Mallam Kyari and the vain talk that followed after being shut out,of the Villa, should give discerning minds a glimpse not only of the caliber and leadership capacity of the remaining aides of the president but what to expect from them in the future.

  17. Thanks for the enlightment, you know him more than I do who am I to oppose you. I thought Abba was a beast as portrayed by many. Now I know the days ahead are truly evil.

  18. Thank you sir. I am enlightened. May God help us in this country. We are confuse. We don’t know who to believe anymore. But your write up is so convincing. I thank you for this clarifications.

  19. Didymus Friday

    This has actually open our eyes to the fact and true personality of Abba. Indeed he was a great man .
    My opinion, it would have been better if those who knew the truth will speak up when it is day before night cometh.
    Sir, you would have defended him while it as day

  20. I’ve come to know that Nigerian Politicians become saints after death.
    God is Supreme, pls fear GOD, do the right thing and save us from these daily tears of woes.
    Nigeria is so bitter to me…Every day is a new horror…no excitement, no hope.
    Misery is all I see ravaging my fellow helpless citizen.
    God will judge each one according to his/her deeds.

  21. Hillary Onoh Ezeh

    My mentor, I’m so sorry I disagree with you on this. But you still remain my hero. You are a legend and I have an awesome adoration for you. Agreed that Abba has done well in his own judgement, but his bias for his Jihadist north did not allow him speak or do much for the sake of truth and justice. He may have tried sitting on the fence and secretly mending fences and reconciling grievances among dissenting voices in the country. He must have tried being a good man, but he has ultimately served the greed of the north with impunity (though with some reservations)

  22. Salama Dauda

    No one would have envisaged that what you wrote could have emanated from you considering your staunched criticism of this government. We learn every day. God bless FFK.

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