By Godwin Etakibuebu
Ordinarily, Buhari’s suspension of his two very senior officers – David Babachir Lawal; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation [SFG] and Ayo Oke; Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, on matters bordering on integrity, would have been enough, except that a few things are not coordinating in present day Nigeria.
The times in Nigeria are not ordinary. This is the first time, in Nigerian’s democratic development that we are seeing a “house divided against itself”. The centre seems not to be holding, in the words of the late Chinua Achebe, as the fabrics of checks and balances are being shredded daily. The hostility between the Executive and the Legislature has gone passed Kilimanjaro Mountain. It is now heading to Mountain Everest and it is good for the citizenry because “conspiracy of brotherhood” between the two, which hitherto denied us from knowing the reality of how we are governed, is evaporating, and fast too.
The Judiciary, standing aloof, with some senses of balancing the lost glory of the two brothers [Executive and Legislature] was suddenly thrown into the sea of corruptibility by the Executive, through what is now becoming misadventure of “sting operations” by security agencies of the latter. The wind of that “sting operations” by the security agencies succeeded in tearing into pieces the “garment of incorruptible entity” with which the Judiciary hitherto adored itself. It is a different kettle of tea if the Executive and its security agencies are losing their cases against the “corrupt judges” in the temple of justices, which the courts stand for. Suffice to say that these “Holy Malams” have been rubbished enough in the Media court of the uninitiated. This is too bad but that is just the clime in Nigeria for now.
It is against this melancholy that we can only be wiser to look at all events suspiciously. To do otherwise is to be disobedient to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo words of wisdom. The late Sage was once quoted as saying that “to trust is to commit a treasonable felony”. At times like this, l must agree with the wisdom of the old man. Who can l trust at this point in time – the Executive, the Legislature or the Judiciary? Fellow Nigerians, it will be tantamount to suicide mission for us just to trust blindly any segment of the Nigerian leadership in view of events within the last sixteen years.
It is for this reason that l present the three-man Investigative Panel, under the chairmanship of the erudite Law Professor and Vice-President of the Federal Republic, Yemi Osinbajo, set up by Mr President to probe further the duo of SGF and NIA’s DG, for probably culpability, in corrupt practices/accusations as suspect. In coming to this harsh but logical conclusion there are two major perimeters we can rely upon. One of which would be how Mr President handled matters similar to this in the past while the second is to read his lips rather than reading his body language. Let us compare the present to the past to understand where the President is taking us.
On Wednesday, 19th April, 2017, President Buhari suspended both the SGF and NIA DG from office – the former for alleged corrupt practices of enriching himself in contract awards and the latter for claiming ownership, on behalf of the NIA, of N13 billion [$43.4m, £27,800 and N23.2m] found strangely in one apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos. The president set up an investigative panel, made up of the Vice President as chairman, with the National Security Adviser, Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno and the Attorney General of the Federation [AGF], Abubakar Malami as members, to probe the two suspended officers. Before speculating on what the probe panel would be able to achieve or not, let us look at one case of suspension by Major General Buhari in 1984, in his capacity as Military Head of State.
The Military Junta then broke all protocols that year by attempting kidnap of Umaru Dikko from the United Kingdom. The plan, placed in three phases, was successful in phases one [kidnap] and two [deliver to the chosen point of departure from the UK] but failed woefully in the third [airlifting the victim from UK to Nigeria]. Unfortunately, phases one and two were handled exclusively by the dreaded Israeli MOSSAD agents [the operation was approved by its Director General then, Nahum Admoni] while the third phase was mixture of both the Israeli and some Nigerian military intelligence officers, led by Major Mohammed Yusuf. Each of the phases attracted the sum of N10m each.
However, as the operation failed at the point fully commanded by Nigerians [Stansted Airport] due to Nigerian errors on that fateful day of 5th July 1984, the Nigerian military junta was compared to pay compensation to the Israeli authority and the families of those Israeli [Dr Levi Shapiro, who was till then a Consultant Anaesthetist at Hasharon Hospital in Israel, Alexander Barak and Felix Abithol – both MOSSAD agents] arrested and jailed in the UK for the crime of kidnapping Umaru Dikko.
There was no government official that could go to Israel for the settlement of the failed deal in London because Nigeria had then been declared a pariah nation by the international community. General Buhari and his military colleagues thought of a way out of that jam by recruiting two very powerful traditional rulers, one from the North [Alhaji Ado Bayero, the Emir of Kano] and the other from the South [Oba Okunade Sijuade, the Ooni of Ife] to travel to Israel for the settlement on behalf of the government. Here again, the military junta miscalculated as it under-estimated the vigilance of the Western Media and this mission back-fired as the Cable News Network [CNN] captured both Monarchs in Tel Aviv airport in Israel and beamed same round the viewing world.
What followed was like a holocaust to all, including the suspension of the two most respected Kings. That became the first pointer that PMB has been in the game of suspending people for a long time. What has the suspension of 1984 got to do with suspension of 2017? Wait till next week please.
Godwin Etakibuebu, a veteran journalist, wrote from Lagos.