Following revelations that the National
Security Adviser (NSA), Major-General Babagana Mongunu, was briefed by the
suspended Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA),
Ambassador Ayo Oke, about the money recovered from
the Osborne Towers, Ikoyi,
Lagos and the operations of the intelligence agency, many Nigerians have asked
him to disqualify himself from the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo panel
investigating the matter.
Vice
President Osinbajo, Mongunu and the Attorney General of the Federation and
Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, are members of the presidential probe
panel looking into the seized N15 billion in the Ikoyi apartment and the
controversial Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps contracts in the North-East,
for which Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal,
was suspended.
Speaking on
Mongunu’s membership of the panel, Giwa Victor, human rights lawyer and
national coordinator, Advocate for People’s Justice, said it would be a
misnomer for the NSA to be part of it.
He said it
would be against the rule of natural justice for the NSA to continue to parade himself as member of the probe panel
since he was believed to have been aware of the $43 million.
“If the NSA
was aware, it means he has questions to answer. Why did he feign ignorance? He
is now a party. Being aware of the money is enough reason for him to disqualify
himself. He too should be invited by the panel to answer some questions. In a
normal situation, the DG of NIA should inform the NSA since he controls all the
security agencies.
“He ought to
have drawn the attention of the President to such funds. If the President seems
not be aware, it means the NSA did not tell him. If the DG of NIA is claiming
that the NSA was aware, he cannot be in the panel probing the recovery. He should disqualify himself and be invited
as a party to tell the panel what he knows.”
Also
reacting, former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Ebony State, Dr. Benjamin
Igwenyi, said not only should Mongunu be excused for the panel, he should be
suspended from office as NSA and be made to face a panel.
Speaking in
a telephone interview with Daily Sun in Abuja yesterday, the former Attorney
General said if the NSA was briefed about the money orally or in writing, he
ought to have informed President Buhari about it.
He said if
anything, Mongunu should be suspended as well for failing to brief the
President about the money after he was allegedly told.
Said he: “He
should not be part of the panel, because if the NIA DG informed him, whether
orally or in writing and the suspension came and he didn’t stop it…If the NSA
is informed and he didn’t inform the President, it was bad. He ought to be
suspended, because any information at the disposal of the NSA should be
available to the President. Under the rule of law, he is not supposed to be a
member of the panel.”
A Senior
Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Chief Emeka Ngige while responding to the dispute
over disclosure of the $43million said: “My own take is that Osinbajo panel be
allowed to conduct its investigations without distraction by the media. The DG
of NIA has already appeared before the panel and presented his memorandum on
the subject matter. Let us now wait and see what the panel makes of his
testimony. I believe the panel has the capacity to deal with all issues, make
appropriate findings and recommendations.”
Chief Mike
Ozekhome (SAN) did not only fault the involvement of the NSA, he said the idea
of the panel itself was uncalled for.
Said
Ozekhome: “First of all, why will the Vice President, who should receive the
report, be a member of the panel? If it were other people DSS, EFCC would have
raided their homes in the night. It all amounts to double standards and trying
to protect their own. Ordinarily, the National Intelligence Agency Act provides
that issues between the intelligence agencies should be treated internally and
not made external. Or could it be that the money was kept for 2019 general
elections and because a Pandora box has been opened, everyone is denying
knowledge of it? If the DG, NIA said the NSA, who was appointed by the
president, was briefed about the money as soon as he was appointed, then it
will not be wrong to say the President was aware of the money.
“So why wait
till now to do what they are doing? And if they are really serious about it,
why not allow EFCC do its investigation and charge the matter to court, instead
of setting up a panel, which the present government has never done before?”
The issue,
now commonly referred to as Ikoyigate, spilled into the open following a raid
by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of a luxury apartment at
Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, where $43 million, N23 million and 27,000 pounds were
discovered, on Wednesday, April 12, 2017.
NIA claimed
that the money was allotted to it for
covert operations.
The
presidency weighed in by suspending Oke on April 19 and set up a three-man
committee led by Osinbajo, to investigate the allegations about the recovered
money.
The panel
has since grilled principal actors in the saga.
Though the panel has been sittings in camera, there was a revelation at
the weekend that the NSA was duly
briefed by Oke about the money long before the veil of secrecy was lifted off
it by the EFCC.
According to
the source, the president was first briefed on the state of affairs in the
agency in April 2015.
A source
revealed: “The funds were itemised as $289 million intervention fund approved
and released to the agency by the Jonathan administration in November 2014,
while the second briefing was in January 2016, via a memo to the NSA where the
DG gave more details of the funds.
“Based on
the second briefing, the NSA set up an audit team headed by a Brigadier
General, which inspected the projects and submitted a report in February 2016.
“The NSA
wrote back to the DG, NIA on May 17, 2016, stating that the detailed report of
NIA’s projects and exercises had been presented to the president and the
president was pleased with their work.”
As the panel
winds down preparatory to submitting report this week, acting Director General,
NIA, Ambassador Arab Yadam and the
deputy Director Operations, Ambassador Emmanuel Okafor have disowned the
embattled Oke, insisting that they knew nothing about the cash N15 billion
cash.
Yadam who is
the deputy Director in charge of Administration and Okafor, were said to have told the
Osinbajo Investigative Panel, that Oke ran “a one-man-show” at the agency.
Sources
close to the panel told Daily Sun that the duo had last Thursday told the panel
that Oke “should carry his own cross for not carrying the top echelon of the
agency along even in the day-to-day running of NIA.’’
They also
accused Oke of “arbitrariness” and refusal to carry both President Buhari and Monguno along,
concerning the true nature of the
“covert operation” that the agency was supposed to undertake with the huge sum of money .
Daily Sun also gathered that the suspended
Director General had told the Committee that Monguno knew about the recovered
money .
Oke claimed
he wrote a memo to the NSA on the custody of the $43.4million and that he
stated clearly in the said memo that the funds were for “covert operations.”
But sources
told Daily Sun that it was when the Presidential Committee on Purchase of Arms,
which Monguno is a member, stumbled on irregular payments by the Central Bank
of Nigeria(CBN) to NIA that the NSA confronted Oke over the matter.
One of the
sources added that it was at that point that the Oke told the NSA that the
monies were released to the agency for “covert operations by the Jonathan
administration but he didn’t disclose any further.”
The source
continued, “the lack of full disclosure necessitated the NSA to write a memo to
the President about the huge cash that was released to the agency by Jonathan
on March 24, 2016.
“In the
memo, Monguno clearly stated that although the objectives of celebrating NIA’s
30th anniversary and executing some covert operations seem noble, there is the
possibility of the funds being abused by the Agency’s leadership.
“Oke erred
by not disclosing fully the source of the fund, where it is located and the appropriate
expenditure in respect of the projects that NIA
was doing either in Lagos or Abuja.’’
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