Death is the ultimate end of all living organism (mankind). When, where and how one will die is unknown. During our time on this planet, called
earth, we do both good and bad things, we do right things as well as commit wrongs. Culturally and traditionally, Nigerians are ethically forbidden to criticize or talk about the bad deeds, wrongs and mistakes committed by the dead when alive. These cultural
and traditional etiquette are said to be very important not only to show respect to the dead but also to protect the dead which can no longer defend its past deeds. Nevertheless, whatever is said about the dead is actually directed at those alive because it
is only the living that can learn from the good deeds of the dead as well as from the mistakes or wrongs committed by the dead. It is impossible for anyone to communicate with the dead or a corpse. For the sake of those alive, one must be able to talk about
both bad and good things done by the dead when alive but one must absolutely refrain from telling lies against the dead. I did not know in person, Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff to Muhammadu Buhari, when he was alive and as such I am not qualified to write
a testimonial on him. Those who knew him and worked with him, even before he was appointed Chief of Staff, have made available to the general public the type of person he was. I am now surprised to read that Abba Kyari was only 67- year-old when he died whereas,
a rascal intellectual on this forum referred to him last year as, ''President Buhari's geriatric and morally stained Chief of Staff.''
When I read that, I thought he was over 80 years. Abba Kyari seemed to have offered his best to Nigeria although not all Nigerians are satisfied, which is normal in life. What is now left for Nigerians who are not schadenfreude is to ponder over how he
became a victim of COVID-19.
Abba Kyari, who was accompanied by Federal Minister of Power, Mr. Saleh Mamman, returned to Nigeria from Germany
on Saturday, 14 March 2020, where both had travelled on Saturday, 7 March 2020 to negotiate for contract to improve Nigeria's power supply with SIEMEN. On his return to Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Health and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control had
already directed that all travellers arriving at Nigeria's airports should be tested for COVID-19 and all Nigerians arriving by air from abroad should be quarantined for 14 days. There was no evidence that Abba Kyari was ever tested at the airport on arrival
from Germany on Saturday, 14 March 2020. He was said to have commenced working immediately by meeting Governors, officials in the presidency and even more attended the wedding ceremony of the son of the Inspector General of Police. On Sunday, 22 March 2020,
as it is now made known, he was at a meeting in the presidency when he started coughing intensively and ceaselessly. Therefore, on Monday, 23 March 2020, the NCDC was compelled to test him and President Muhammadu Buhari for Coronavirus. While Kyari's test
was positive, Buhari's was negative. However, it was not until six days after the test that Abba Kyari informed the public on 29 March 2020 that he was COVID-19 positive and that he was leaving Abuja for Lagos on the same day for treatment. He wrote among
other things, "I have made my own care arrangements to avoid further burdening the public health system, which faces so many pressures." Why did Abba Kyari arrange a private treatment for himself in faraway Lagos, when it was not through a private
arrangement that he was diagnosed positive for COVID-19? Did he not trust any of the hospitals in Abuja? Abba Kyari moved to a private hospital in Lagos on Sunday, 29 March 2020, yet the Federal Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, was reported to have
warned on Friday, 20 March 2020, that private hospitals should not treat cases of Coronavirus and that suspected cases at the private hospitals should be referred to designated NCDC facilities for diagnoses and treatment. He emphasized that private hospitals
in Nigeria do not have required facilities and laboratory to handle a dangerous virus like COVID-19. Why did Abba Kyari ignore the warning of the Minister of Health in a government in which he is a key figure? The State House Clinic in Abuja was designed and
has continuously been financed by the nation to cater for the healthcare needs of the President, Vice President and their families as well as key officials of the presidency. According to online Daily Trust, the capital and recurrent budget allocation to the
State House Clinic, Abuja, since 2015 and hitherto is N 13. 386, 44 billion. Why could Abba Kyari not be treated at the State House Clinic, Abuja? Here we only need to recall that the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, at a public outing on 9 October 2017, told Nigerians
that Aso Rock Villa Clinic headed by Chief Medical Director, Dr. Hussain Munir, was a certified morgue. Now in 2020, one would have thought that Mrs. Aisha Buhari's criticism must have brought required changes into Aso Villa Clinic so that people like Abba
Kyari would have been treated there. What can we, Nigerians still alive, learn from Abba Kyari's sudden demise?
Nigerians must understand that a wealthy individual surrounded by mass poverty is a miserable person and a rich
person in the midst impoverished masses can never have peace of mind or be comfortable. Money can buy expensive good bed, but it cannot buy good sleep. Those who build life quenching structures as clinics and hospitals for Nigerians because they and their
families can fly abroad at a jiffy for medical treatments must now realise that a day of Coronavirus like this will come when the foreign medical establishments will not welcome them. Clique democrats who derive pleasures in urinating in the wells from which
the masses of Nigeria fetch drinking and cooking water, because they could import water sachet from abroad with our oil money, are now forced to taste water from the same wells in which they have been urinating. In our dysfunctional government which is neither
democratic nor theocratic and where people think politics and official positions is all about how much one can grab for self at the expense of the masses, Nigerians should now know that when death strikes, accumulated wealth will not follow them into the
grave. We came into this world with nothing and nothing shall we take with us when we die. If death had asked for money or thousands of cows to spare the life of Abba Kyari, the request would have been granted momentarily. Well, death cannot be bribed and
it does not accept bribes. Death sneaked into the house and snatched away Abba Kyari from us when we least expected.
Adieu Abba Kyari. Greet Major Chukwuma Nzeogu for us if you meet him in heaven. Tell him that the ten per cent
bribery and corruption in Nigeria which was the cause of his military action in 1966 has escalated to one-hundred and ten per cent when you left us. If you see Major General Johnson Thompson Agui-Ironsi, greet him for us and tell him that Decree No. 34 of
May 24, 1966, that turned a Federal constitution into a Unitary one for which he was murdered is still in operation, in Nigeria at the time of your departure from here. If you meet General Sani Abacha, greet him for us and tell him that most of the billions
of dollars he stole from the Nigerian treasury which could have made Nigeria a Dubai are yet to be returned from foreign countries where he lodged our stollen funds. Tell him that Switzerland returned only $700 million out of the $5 billion that he, Abacha,
stole and deposited there, but the returned $700 was re-looted by the succeeding civilian regimes. Tell Abacha that the $550 million he stashed into USA and off-shore Island banks before his demise on 8 June 1998, has been reduced to $308 million because American
lawyers were paid huge amounts out of stolen Nigeria's patrimony but the rest is yet to be repatriated to Nigeria with or without interest. Tell Abacha that Dr. Pious Okigbo's report, which he, Abacha, set up to enquire into how $12.4 billion Gulf War extra
crude oil income, handled by General Ibrahim Babangida, grew wings and flew away, had vanished and could no longer be found. Tell Abacha that General Olusegun Obasanjo who had only N20,000 in his bank account when he was released from the prison that he kept
him, became civilian President of Nigeria and ruled for eight years. During the eight years tenure, Obasanjo magically became a billionaire and he is now living in a hilltop mansion at Abeokuta just as General Ibrahim Babangida does in Minna, Niger State.
Tell General Sani Abacha that the list of Nigerians he and those who ruled after him allocated oil blocks to, remains a secret to Nigerians except the oil block he dashed to General Theophilous Yakubu Danjuma in 1995. Tell him that General Danjuma, himself,
revealed that he, Abacha, dashed him Oil Prospecting License (OPL) 246 in February 1998, through his company South Atlantic Petroleum Limited (SAPETRO). Abacha probably might have forgotten about this, but remind him that OPL 246 oil block covered a total
area of 2, 590 square kilometers and since Danjuma, like many of indigenous Nigerian oil block owners, do not know the simple chemical formula for water not to talk of complicated chemistry of crude oil extraction and related engineering, Danjuma's SAPETRO
partnered with Total Upstream Nigeria Ltd and Bras Oil Services Company Nigeria Ltd to start prospection on OPL 246. In June 2006, General T.Y. Danjuma divested part of its ownership and obligations to China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and received
$1.8 billion. Tell Abacha that the crude oil which, constitutionally, belongs to all Nigerians and which he and his successors in office have allocated as oil blocks to few individual Nigerians have in turn been sold to foreign companies for pittance to become
Nigeria's local dollar millionaires.
If you meet Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, greet him for us and tell him that the extra-judicial murder of Mohammed Yusuf,
the leader of Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad ( People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad) in 2009 during his presidency has been made by Nigerian Armed Forces Service Chiefs to metamorphose into a big armed rebellion.
Tell him that the Service Chiefs under his successor as President, have become extremely rich as they stole money meant for buying weapons, recruiting soldiers and paying them salaries. Instead, they recruited ghost soldiers and allowed what is now known as
Boko Haram to run amok. Tell him that the EFCC had filed cases of thefts against all the Service Chiefs up to June 2015, but powerful forces that you ought to know by virtue of your position as Chief of Staff have been obstructing speedy trial of the culprits,
although most of them have forfeited huge assets to the Federal government. Should Umaru Musa Yar'Adua doubt your narratives about the Service Chiefs, call the late Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Subundu Badeh, who arrived heaven before you, as a witness for
you. By the way, the Presidential inauguration of Yar'Adua on 29 May 2007, contained a 7-point agenda which be promised to fulfil before the end of his four years tenure. Point one of the agenda was,
"Declaration of National Emergency in the energy sector by increasing power supply to 30,000 Megawatts." Tell Yar'Adua that the cause of your demise was your visit to Germany, 7-14 March 2020, to sign a contract for the improvement of electric
power supply in Nigeria from the current nearly 3,000 Megawatts and there you contracted deadly COVID-19. Tell Yar'Adua that the saboteurs of the Nigeria's electricity are the generator importers. Dear Abba Kyari, there are many people I will like you to help
us greet over there in the life beyond but time and space will not permit me to do so. As you used to say when you were here with us, the Ifa Priest (Bábáláwó) will die, the Physician (Onísègùn) will go to heaven. We shall all die. While wishing you to rest
in peace, I also wish that the time of the demise of those of us you left behind here on earth will be many many years far away from the time of your own death.
S. Kadiri