President Muhammadu Buhari, has downplayed the claims that certain individuals among his Aides and relatives, often called “Cabals”, in the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, have an influence on his government.
“I was the one who went round the country on campaigns, and I was the one voted into Office as President, twice. No one else did, and no one else took the Oath of Office, and can exercise the powers of a President”, Buhari said when he fielded questions in an exclusive interview with The Interview Newspaper.
Many Nigerians, prominent among whom is the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, have claimed that there is a ‘Cabal’ in Aso Rock, whose influence on the decisions taken by Buhari and the Presidency, is immense.
Mrs. Buhari, at several instances, had accused these people of controlling her husband at the expense of Nigerians, who entrusted Buhari with their mandate.
Those routinely fingered as members of the Cabal include the President’s relative, Mamman Daura; his Associate, Isa Funtua; and his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.
Very recently too, Mrs. Buhari asked an Aide of the President, Garba Shehu, to resign, or be relieved of his position, after she accused Shehu of receiving instructions from the said Cabal, much to the detriment of her husband and the First family.
Shehu had also admitted the existence of a Cabal within the inner cycle of the Presidency. He maintained that they are not “hungry people”, rather, they are “respectable people who deserve respect, because they have achieved a lot”.
Unlike Shehu, however, a Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, described the existence of a group of people called the ‘Cabal’, as a “myth”.