President Bola Tinubu’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, comes across to me as principled, humble and patriotic. The president commented in the council chamber recently, saying he had confidence in him. Much water must have passed under the bridge for the president to publicly say this. I don’t find out the details because I already have my suspicions which I shall explain. Even at that, from the day Egbon Femi was appointed I expected that with his kind of personality, and the way we are as Nigerians, some would find reasons to grumble. I suppose this is what the president addresses.
The post of CoS to the President of Nigeria was created in 1999 just as it was obtained in the White House. The duties of the CoS are assigned by the President and they’re essentially about managing the flow of information and people. The CoS thus provides a buffer between the president and the president’s direct-reporting team. He generally works behind the scenes to solve problems, mediate disputes, and deal with issues before they are brought to the president. Often the CoS acts as a confidant and advisor to the president, being as a sounding board for ideas as well.
When Gbajabiamila was appointed, I tweeted that the appointment was a defining one for the new administration and so Nigerians knew what to expect. It was a positive development. Why? To me many of the not-too-positive things we heard in the past that got to the table of former presidents and got approved did because of the kind of sieves we had. A CoS is in many ways a sieve. Issues to be brought before the president pass through his table. I thought the president needed someone of Gbajabiamila’s quality, and that his appointment was telltale of what the president was thinking, the kind of government he wanted to run. The president didn’t want frivolous things passing through the conveyor belt to his table. He knew the 14th Speaker could handle this, so he appointed him.
Now, the regular reader of this page already knows I state what I see as I see them irrespective of tribe or religion. If anyone from any tribe says it right, I nod. If anyone from any tribe does it wrong I state what they missed, giving precise reasons for disagreeing with them, using practical illustrations rather than engage in generic condemnation. I’ve never met Gbajabiamila in person. The first time I made a comment on him here was in 2019 after he was elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives. My brief comment then was on a lighter note. Later when I thought the occurrence through it occurred to me that what I commented on was a profound issue, something that spoke to who Gbajabiamila really was more than anything else.
It was his first day at work following the day he emerged as the Speaker. Gbajabiamila entered the chamber, stopped along the way to have handshakes with fellow lawmakers, and at one point headed for a seat on the floor. He had taken a few steps before he remembered that the exalted seat of the Speaker that was on the other side was his. He turned and headed in the direction. If this occurrence seems inconsequential to the reader, they need to wait for me to explain how I think this speaks to who Gbajabiamila is. On the university campus years ago, I brought my car along for the first time one day and packed it right in front of my room in the post-graduate hostel.
The following morning, I got ready for class, walked out of the hostel room, walked past the car and I was some metres away before I remembered that my car was there. It wasn’t the only occasion such happened. Sometimes, I do some transactions, come out of the place and walk away before it occurs to me that I come with my car. Actually, this is one fallout of always wanting to leave my mind as free as possible more than it is forgetfulness. At the hostel on the stated occasion, I turned back, took the key and drove out of the hostel. Along the way I picked a postgraduate student, somewhat elderly.
As we discussed I said it as a joke that I wouldn’t have picked him because I initially forgot that I brought the car to the campus. The man turned to look at me and said if he were the one who owned the car, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep during the night. I would understand if he said he liked the car in question. But I didn’t understand it when he said he wouldn’t be able to sleep because of a car, of any material thing. The reader won’t understand too if they don’t allow anything outside of them to define them. What a person has inside of them should define them, not material things, not even the post they occupy.
Believing otherwise is one of the problems the Black man has, the reason many do some of the things they do, the reason a man such as the former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is one of my favourites. He lives his life free, never allowing what people think to constrain him. He rides his bicycle, jogs across neighbourhoods, drives, and takes long walks. I do all of that too, being an active keep-fit enthusiast all my life. Even when Johnson attended the United Nations meetings in New York at the time he was Foreign Secretary, he jogged across the city.
It’s a burden to carry oneself based on post or material things. It’s obvious from what happened in the House of Reps in 2019 that the night after Gbajabiamila emerged as Speaker, he slept his usual sleep; he slept like a baby. I do too no matter what has happened around me during the day. I keep everything out of my mind and just sleep. I don’t recall a day I got shortlisted, won a literary award, got congratulated for finishing top three in my masters and Ph.D programmes, or got an appointment, that I didn’t sleep soundly. That Gbajabiamila didn’t let his new post as Speaker affect his naturally humble disposition must be a reason he arrived at the chamber and first headed for a seat on the floor. He was his usual self before he became Speaker; he was his usual self after he became Speaker.
When you have such a man in the high office of CoS, you know where the nation stands. When he was the Speaker, I paid attention to his utterances. I saw a public official who knew and felt strongly that so many things in government were being done. It occurred to me then that if he had the powers to single-handedly change the narrative he would. It was there written over all his comments sometimes when he presided as Speaker, and on occasions he attended committee hearings.
Some of the more profound comments Gbajabiamila made about the state of the nation came after different committees in the House unveiled the atrocities committed in ministries and agencies. Agencies expended funds not allocated to them by law. The looting going on was humongous, some of the numbers mentioned as having been pocketed by one person so huge one could hardly believe it. In the twilight of the 9th Assembly, Gbajabiamila lamented during an interview how some individuals thought public funds were there to be looted to make them wealthy. These individuals simply wanted to grab everything. I commented on Gbajabiamila’s observation on then Twitter (now X) at the time.
It was this clear to me when he was appointed as the president’s CoS that Nigerians now had someone who wouldn’t let looters send voodoo proposals to the president’s table in order to loot funds in trillions. The merry-go-round, anything goes, would stop. I imagine Gbajabiamila is ensuring this as the CoS but some are afraid, sad. Being an intelligent and experienced public official, and having seen atrocities that some functionaries used a president’s approval to perpetrate in the past, this principled, humble, and patriotic CoS is the person we need at this time. Gbajabiamila should continue to do his job. I applaud the president for ensuring this.
