The Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, Abba Kyari, was on Saturday laid to rest a day after he died of coronavirus.
Kyari’s body was brought in an ambulance to the Defence House in Abuja, where family members and colleagues paid their last respect, before he was buried at the Gudu Cemetery in the Federal Capital Territory.
His death was announced in the early hours of Saturday by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, and another President’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, via their Twitter handles.
News of Kyari testing positive for COVID-19 broke on March 24, about 10 days after he returned from Germany where he met with officials of Siemens in Munich on Nigeria’s electricity expansion programme.
The deceased later revealed that he would be transferred to Lagos from the FCT for treatment and had hoped to recover and return to work.
Though much is not known about his early life, Kyari was a Kanuri man from Borno. He attended University of Warwick and University of Cambridge, both in England, and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in sociology and law respectively. He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1983 after attending the Nigerian Law School.
A year later, he went back to Cambridge for his Masters before proceeding to the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, and later at the Harvard Business School in 1992 and 1994 respectively.
Kyari worked with Fani-Kayode and Sowemimo law firm before returning to Nigeria. Between 1988 and 1990, he was Editor with the New Africa Holdings Limited, Kaduna.
In 1990, he became the Commissioner for Forestry and Animal Resources in Borno State. From that year till 1995, he served as the secretary to the board of African International Bank Limited, a subsidiary of Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
He was an Executive Director in charge of management services at the United Bank for Africa (UBA) before being appointed as the Chief Executive Officer.
In 2002, he was appointed a Board Director of Unilever Nigeria, and later served on the board of Exxon Mobil Nigeria.
In August 2015, President Buhari appointed Kyari as the Chief of Staff.
He was married to the sister-in-law of Ibrahim Tahir, a Nigerian politician during the Second Republic, and had four children.