The Presidency at the weekend justified the existence of certain individuals who are close to President Muhammadu Buhari. It claimed they help him in taking informed decisions on critical national issues.
Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity to President Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu made the confession at an interactive session with newsmen according to TRIBUNE.
Individuals who have been in the news as kitchen cabinet of President Buhari include, his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari; business mogul, Mallam Isa Funtua and Buhari’s nephew and long-time associate, Mamman Daura.
Mallam Shehu who expressed concern that his principal’s long-time associates are being painted in bad light claimed some of them are successful individuals, making huge personal sacrifices for the nation and submitted that it was not a sin to be in the good book of a sitting president as a close confidant.
He insisted that every administration all over the world has a cabal or kitchen cabinet that drives its policies.
He said: ”What is the meaning of cabal? I just googled Thesaurus and among many other definitions, what they are saying is that cabal means ‘conspire, intrigues, mystique, occult, secret.’
”There is no government in this country that we have had that some people were not accused of being a cabal in that government and it is because every administration, every president must have a secretariat.
”Every president must have people who advise him. It is not a sin, it is not an offence to have people that you take into confidence. Elsewhere, they call it ‘Kitchen Cabinet’, but in our own country we are being derogatory and we term them the cabal so that it will tarnish their own good standing.”
Mallam Shehu further declared that some of these individuals labelled as President Buhari’s cabal enjoy no special privileges.
”A lot of them are successful people who are making extreme sacrifices to even come to serve the government. Some of them have no need to be around the government.
”In fact, for some of our elites, Buhari is a bad man because you cannot go to him and say give me oil well and he will sign the paper and give you. So, we understand the game that is playing out and there is always a price, in any case, to pay for that kind of exposure. Even the president himself, the kind of things that are being said of him, if he did not offer himself to serve, some of those things, people would not even have the chance to say them against him. So, we will live with it, we will accept it because it goes with the territory.”
