The Presidency has said having some people around the President which some elites term as cabal is never a sin.
The seat of power believes that elsewhere such people are called ‘kitchen cabinet’ who are making lot of sacrifice daily to better the nation.
Speaking at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Press Corps at the weekend, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu, said a lot of the people called cabal in the presidency “are successful people who are making extreme sacrifices to even be coming to serve government.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“Some of them have no need around government but because this is a country of people, some of them much in a hurry. 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 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.”