Abba Kyari warns that EU, US and UK have a vested interest in Saturday's presidential election

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari's chief of staff Alhaji Abba Kyari has added to the ongoing controversy surrounding international election observers warning that the European Union and US have a vested interest in ensuring his principal loses next Saturday's poll.

Over the last week, there has been a lot of commentary on the role of international observers and election monitors, with Kaduna State's Governor Nasir El-Rufai warning that they will be sent away in body bags if they interfere in the process. As a result of the heightened tension, former US president Bill Clinton cancelled a planned trip to Nigeria, saying he did not want his visit to be politicised.

Festus Keyamo, a spokesman for the Buhari campaign organisation had accused the US ambassador of overstepping his mark with his interest in Nigeria's elections. To dose the tension, inspector-general of police Mohammed Adamu met with all election observers earlier this week and assured them of their safety and security.

However, the matter refuses to go away as Alhaji Kyari, widely regarded as the head of the cabal in Aso Rock and a man who wields limitless powers, has accused the US, UK and EU of having a hidden agenda ahead of Saturday’s elections. In a newspaper article titled Tomorrow Never Dies, he questioned the motives of the Western nations which claim to support Nigeria’s democratic growth but surreptitiously support those who want President Buhari to lose.

Alhaji Kyari said: “These players have failed, they are angry but they have not yet given up and they have some unlikely allies. Our traditional friends in the US and Europe say they want nothing from Nigeria except free and fair elections but if you look at what their representatives here actually do rather than what they say, the unmistakable signs of a quite different agenda are plain to see.”

He added that some of those in the campaign team of former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who is standing as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate  have links to Paul Manafort, a former aide to US President Donald Trump, who has been indicted with electoral fraud. According to Alhaji Kyari, the PDP perpetrated high-level corruption which set Nigeria on the path of failure and a vote for Atiku would represent taking Nigeria backwards and wondered why the international community would fail to see this.

Alhaji Kyari stressed:  “Instead of judging Nigeria by our actions, it seems altogether too easy for foreign partners to be swayed by the expensive words of lobbyists. Riva Levinson has been hired by Bukola Saraki.

“She was trained by Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, both caught up in the probe into interference by foreign powers in the US elections in 2016 and to dictators like Siad Barre, unprincipled warlords like Jonas Savimbi, or frauds like Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, the man who neo-conned the Bush White House. We are meant to believe that Ms Levinson, like the others who are paid by one of the contestants, wants only to promote a free and fair race and that it is only a coincidence that this language for hire is identical to what we hear from accredited diplomats.”

He alleged that these foreign powers may not be happy with President Buhari’s reforms which have cut imports from their countries. Alhaji Kyari added:  “Do our foreign friends simply not understand what is at stake, or do they actually want us to fail?

"We know we are not equal partners and do not pretend to be so. In our own time in government, the US, the UK and the EU let us know subtly and often not so subtly, what we should be doing on everything from currency reform to fuel deregulation and the importation of toothpicks.

“They have their own subsidies to protect key strategic interests, their farmers and steel plants but condemn our own efforts to protect the poorest and most vulnerable from an unregulated market for food, transport and housing, or to create and protect space for new opportunities and innovation to flourish. This is not so much a question of policy but integrity and we, at least, mean what we say, although so many past governments in Nigeria did not.”