WHEN at first Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security Adviser in the Goodluck Jonathan Administration was slammed with a cocktail of charges including money laundering, illegal possession of arms and misappropriation of funds meant for the procurement of arms for the Nigerian military, not many could have imagined the matter would extend beyond him.
His troubles all seemed to some Nigerians, especially many in the Peoples Democratic Party, as a battle of wits and scores settling between him and Muhammadu Buhari, dating back to their days in the military. Ordinarily Buhari was too senior to Dasuki, a middle ranking officer as at the time Buhari was already a two star general and military head of state of the country, to justify linking them both in a discussion. But the role Col. Dasuki, as one of the so-called Babangida boys, played in the ouster of Buhari would seem to make the accusation of the execution of a possible Buhari vendetta against him seem plausible.
But as days grew into weeks and the details of the charges against Dasuki were fleshed out matters took a different turn, warranting a different reading of the situation. This was for those not sold forever like Raymond Dokpesi on the idea that the charges against Dasuki were all trumped up. Moreover details started emerging of how Dasuki had turned the office of the National Security Adviser into a conduit pipe for the siphoning of slush funds into the re-election campaign of Goodluck Jonathan. Beyond the huge stash of dollars Dasuki was reported to have kept in his Abuja residence and the purchase of high end properties in prime locations abroad, Dasuki generally appears to have shared ‘the garri’ of the US $2.1 billion meant for the purchase of arms across the board. In the absence of knowing the actual monetary worth of the properties he is alleged to have acquired aside the cash reportedly found in his house, he does not appear to have kept most of the arms deal fund for himself. A very generous sharer of money not his he certainly is.
As the investigation goes on Dasuki’s generosity in sharing our commonwealth to a select group of politicians and political jobbers feels me with a present and nagging concern. Should the ongoing investigation be followed wherever it leads without fear or favour, I fear it might lead to the brutal but necessary end of the present class of politicians that have kept this country under its leash in the last two or more generations. I said earlier that when the investigation started it all looked like it would end with Dasuki. But since one of Dasuki’s lieutenants started spilling the bean and Dasuki was apparently left no better option than to follow suit, the bizarre jamboree of illegal and criminal diversion of funds into private pockets appears to have widened in circle, cutting across party divides to include individuals and groups nobody could have connected with the office of the National Security Adviser to say nothing of being linked to the re-election of Jonathan.
When weeks before the election it was widely reported in sections of the media that the PDP under Jonathan had been distributing foreign currencies to individuals and groups that included traditional rulers, light and heavyweight politicians, and ‘grassroots’ mobilisers across the country, it sounded like an attempt to blackmail the government. Revelations from this Dasuki affair have surely confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that that administration was at the time of the reports swimming in the cesspool of criminal wastage and sleaze in the name of political campaign. It is as if the PDP administration knew the only way it could win that election outside rigging it outright was to bribe every category of Nigerians willing to be bribed to work for its return to power. Politically, the administration was clearly at the end of its tether. Which was a fact that must have been obvious to its most starry-eyed supporters.
In its bid to retain power the Jonathan administration went on a spending spree not minding the damage that would eventuate from that. Now Nigerians can see that the only strategy the government had for winning was to continue with the nauseating squandering of Nigeria’s resources in a last ditch attempt to hang on to power. The outcome of all of this is that the administration, through the office of the NSA, has succeeded in at once implicating and criminalising virtually most sections of the Nigerian political class for the criminal abetting of fund misappropriation and mismanagement.
Many of those who swore they had nothing to do with the $2.1 Billion Dasuki bazaar are now pre-empting investigators by claiming they could be framed into the matter while denying any knowledge that either they or the organisations they belong in shared in the misappropriated funds. Others owned up to sharing in the funds while claiming they did so in line of their official duty. This even when their share was remitted into their private accounts or accounts owned by their companies. In the first two groups belong the likes of Femi Fani-Kayode who has not been officially linked with the funds and Olisa Metuh who was picked up by the EFCC after many days of prevarication.
Only days after Alhaji Tanko Yakassai had sworn in a newspaper interview never to have taken any money, directly or indirectly, for supporting Jonathan, he owned up to collecting a princely N63million from Chief Tony Anenih. Yet others in opposition parties like the Social Democratic Party of Olu Falae and Accord Party of Rashid Ladoja also owned up to receiving respectively the very royal sum of N100 million for supporting the re-election of Jonathan. A little more pressure and those in other political groups presently denying any link to the arms deal fraud would be confessing their part in this disgraceful and tragic misadventure.
Sharers in the Dasuki-PDP largess fall into two broad groups. The first are those supporters who knew they were either helping themselves or were being helped to illegal funds from the office of the NSA for jobs of clearly dubious specification. In this group are the Dokpesis, the Bafarawas, the Mohammed Bello Halilu and sons, and a section of the leadership of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria. The other group are those mostly outside the PDP who got their share of the diverted arms funds from second hand sources like Chief Anenih. These are guilty by association- possible cases of what in local parlance is called akoba-adaba. They were soiled by the devil’s offer from the PDP. While that may mitigate their guilt it is doubtful if it will absolve them of complicity. Anywhere they turn they are smeared in the Dasuki mess.
VANGUARD
END
Na wa. No wonder PDP was so desperate for a win in the 2015 Presidential Elections. A win was necessary at all cost to cover up thier atrocities, now made open because of thier loss.
No wonder Dasuki blew the whistle of a postponement of tht Presidential Election6; he apparently needed more time for the sharing of funds.
I just want to appreciate God for where we are right now as a country. We definitely have not reached destination point, but we are on our way and we will get there by the special grace of God.
Let us pray for the President and his team to succeed and let each of us cultivate a new and right attitude of doing things right. That way, we shall all achieve this change as individuals and as a country.
Long live Nigeria!