Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, CFR, who his now the new Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari was born on 24 November 1944 in Ilorin, Kwara State to a Fulani family.
According to Wikipedia, Gambari obtained his B. Sc. (Economics) degree (1968) with specialization in International Relations in London School of Economics where he later obtained his M.A. (1970) and Ph. D. (1974) degrees from Columbia University, New York, USA in Political Science /International Relations.
Gambari is a scholar-diplomat, Founder/Chairman of the Board of Directors of Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, a non-governmental think-tank on research, policy studies, advocacy and training on the nexus between conflict prevention and resolution, democratisation and development in Africa.
He is currently a Chairperson of the Panel of Eminent Persons of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM).
Gambari, started his career in 1969 as a lecturer at City University of New York, before moving to Nigeria and became a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University, in Zaria, Kaduna State. He later became the Chancellor of the Kwara State University in March 2013.
He was the Minister for External Affairs in 1984 and 1985 under General Muhammadu Buhari regime, this showed that Gambari will be serving time in Buhari’s cabinet but now as the Chief of Staff.
He later became the longest-serving Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations from 1990-1999, serving under five Head of State and Presidents.
As an international diplomat, Gambari has held several positions in the United Nations, first as the President of UNICEF and later became UN Under-Secretary-General and the first Special Adviser on Africa to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1999 to 2005. He later became the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2007 under Secretary-General’s Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon. And finally, from 2010 to 2012, he was appointed in the UN as the Joint African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur.