Prof Ibrahim Gambari, former Chief of Staff to the late ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, has narrated how members of the former president’s cabal bypassed him to smuggle memos to the former president.

“They knew his weak moment, they knew when to smuggle (memos) because they knew him as they interacted with him informally,” Gambari said on Channels Television’s Inside Sources programme on Friday.

Gambari, a former United Nations special envoy, was Buhari’s chief of staff from May 13, 2020, to May 29, 2023. He was appointed shortly after the death of Abba Kyari, who occupied the role till his passing.

“When I came as Chief of Staff to the President, he made a statement publicly. He said all memos must go through the Chief of Staff before coming to him.

“Even the Vice President (Yemi Osinbajo), to his credit, always passed his memos through me and several minister but our people still got their memos to him from behind because they knew his weak point and who to use and he never stopped them but the advantage I had was that the memos came back to me,” the diplomat stated.

In his reflections on his time with the former president, who died on July 13, 2025, Gambari said Buhari loved his appointees just as he loved Nigerians, and that accounted for why he was reluctant to sack members of his cabinet despite overwhelming calls in that direction.

The octogenarian described his late former principal as a compassionate man who served Nigeria with everything he had.

Gambari confirmed that though Buhari had a group of powerful individuals who shaped his opinions and decisions on national issues, “they knew their limits”.

The diplomat said the nature of the office of the president required having a think tank.

He said, “They say there was a cabal, there was. Every government has a cabal. They may call them a kitchen cabinet; they may call them a think tank.

“(Former President Olusegun) Obasanjo had a group of people. The Aboyades of this world and others – a small group of people. It’s the nature of the office of the president that they must have some people in and out of government whom they can let their guard down to and talk to freely.

“Some have more powers than others, but I’m bold to say that every government has a cabal of some kind or another, whatever name it is called. So, there was (a cabal under Buhari).

“I was a minister 1884-1985 but I wasn’t privy to why he was removed by his colleagues; they put him there but one of the reasons I’m told was the military people were resenting the fact that Head of State Buhari was now getting a lot of advice and second-guessing the decision of his military colleagues – the Supreme Military Council.”

Born on December 17, 1942, Buhari served as the country’s military head of state between January 1984 and August 1985. He later returned as Nigeria’s democratically elected president in May 2015, a position he held for eight unbroken years until May 2023, when he handed over to his party’s man, Bola Tinubu. (Channels TV)