05082020 - Buhari to completely rejig security system —NSA

16 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2020
Mamman Daura, the silent power broker
MAMMAN Daura is a man much
heard of but never heard from. He
is a study in self-enigmatisation. As President
Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew he is closest
in blood to the president among the regime’s
cabal members. Last week, for the first time
since the past five years when his uncle
became president, Mamman opened up on
a sensitive national issue.
He did not address the Boko Haram
Islamist terror which they had promised to
eradicate by December 2015. After the
convoy of Governor Babagana Zulum of
Borno State recently came under fire, he
declared there were fifth columnists in our
Army making sure the war never ends. After
his Sallah rites, President Buhari declared
that people he put in office have betrayed
his confidence in the fight against insecurity
and graft.
The North West (especially Mamman’s
Katsina State and Daura town) remains
under siege by “bandits”. Herdsmen are
killing, kidnapping, raping and forcefully
settling on people’s lands in the Middle Belt
and Southern Nigeria. The government of
which he is perhaps the most influential
person is unable to solve most of the
problems it met five years ago.
Mamman Dura did not consider any of
these issues topical enough to address when
it pleased him to speak. He chose instead to
address bread and butter – power – and
where the next president should come from.
Mamman Daura became a power broker
when his uncle emerged as president, though
he was nowhere to be seen during the
conspiracies and grunt work.
I warned Southerners when they were
huffing and hyping to install Buhari
president between 2013 and 2015, hoping
to “share” power and inherit the presidency
when he finished. I told them that the highest
they could get were jobs, contracts and
waivers, including temporary anticorruption
waivers. I warned that if Buhari
became president, the people who were going
to be in power with him won’t be those
toiling for him. When the food is ready, a
different set of people will sit around the
dinner table with Buhari. They will be
wearing babanriga and turbans and
discussing in a vernacular only they
understand. Monkey go work baboon go chop.
I told them that the Caliphate extremists
represented by Buhari do not believe in
power sharing. They will be “generous” to
you as they were with the late Moshood
Abiola and Arthur Eze of Ukpo. They believe
that the power is their birthright bestowed
on them by their ancestors, Usman Dan
Fodio and Ahmadu Bello. Before now, they
were carrying the whole North with them,
making everybody feel they belonged even
if they did not. But in five years of Buharism
when Mamman Daura and co have quietly
concatenated power from the background,
the gloves have been off. Public offices that
belong to you and I are given to people of
Buhari’s ethnicity and religion. Nigeria is
now for the ethnic Fulani from all over
Africa. They are free to come, massacre
indigenous peoples, take over their lands
and receive the protection of our now
sectionalised military, security and police.
Buhari has surpassed my expectations. Even
some Northern Muslims are beginning to
wonder if they are still “among”.
When Buhari consolidated his power, there
was this initial effort at exploiting his
popularity to get him a tenure elongation.
It was dropped mainly because the hostile
National Assembly leadership of former
Senate President, Bukola Saraki and
Speaker, Yakubu Dogara would block it,
anyway. The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,
and even Bola Tinubu’s faction of the All
Progressives Congress, APC, would come
out against it.
If the APC reneges on the
gentleman’s agreement to cede
power to the South in 2023, the
party will no longer be a ruling
party
Having realised that this plan A stands no
chance, Mamman Daura has now come out
with the cabal’s plan B: throw the
presidential contest open in 2023 in the
belief that it will produce another
Northerner from Buhari’s fold. It is only
another cabal product that can continue
what has been described as the regime’s
“Islamisation and Fulanisation” agenda.
No Southerner (even Tinubu, a Muslim) will
agree to drive this agenda.
Mamman Daura called for the cessation
of the rotation and zoning culture which has
been in place since 1999. It has outlived its
usefulness, he said. Has the South East
produced a president? Now that it is the turn
of that geopolitical zone, it suddenly outlives
its usefulness! Mind you, I am no longer
nuts about “Igbo presidency”. I want
freedom. Inside or outside Nigeria, give me
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freedom. Let me run my life and determine
my future. I am tired of being hampered by
parasites.
Rotational presidency is meant to prolong
the lifespan of Nigeria under the current
lopsided dispensation. It is a palliative, not
panacea. Mamman Daura does not even
want to allow the palliative. He wants to
strengthen his hold on his newly-acquired
colony – Nigeria. I don’t blame him and his
cohorts. You can only ride a horse when it
bends down for you to climb onto its back.
In 2014/2015, the APC Southern leaders had
a choice between a Caliphate extremist:
Buhari, and a Caliphate liberal: Atiku
Abubakar. Atiku who would have been more
disposed towards a give-and-take deal.
Tinubu gave power to Buhari because of
the latter’s fabled 12 million Northern votes.
I hope that he and his followers are still
happy with their choice, especially now that
Mamman Daura, the most prominent
surviving Buhari cabal member, has spoken.
A newspaper has reported of plans to bring
back Atiku, Aminu Tambuwal and Rabiu
Kwankwaso to the APC to power through
another Northern president in 2023.
In Nigeria, some people do the work,
others take the rewards. Mamman Daura,
the journalist, has never pretended to be a
nationalist. His media work has centred on
promoting the Fulani/Islamic Caliphate
ideology for the control of power in the
North and Nigeria and supporting Northern
military dictators. Those who struggled to
bring back our democracy have settled for
crumbs from Mamman Daura’s table. He
who has his mouth full of food does not talk.
Take this home, however: If the APC
reneges on the gentleman’s agreement to
cede power to the South in 2023, the party
will no longer be a ruling party. The now
quiet Western front will come out smoking.
There won’t be national tranquility.
When it starts, Mamman Daura will only
return to his tortoise’s shell where he really
belongs.
As we debate the NDDC and Magu,
let’s remember Abdulrasheed Maina
THE plethora of corruption
sagas involving appointees
of President Muhammadu Buhari
continue to generate debate
among Nigerians even through the
Eid holidays. This is as things
should be. Rather than getting
excited over and being distracted
by the unimportant details of these
sagas, Nigerians should
constantly remind themselves that
the issues raised by the corruption
cases must not be swept under the
carpet. We must get to the root of
these new cases and see them all
to their logical conclusion. The
problem with us is that we are no
sooner exercised by one event
involving both public and private
citizens than we are distracted by
another even while we are yet to
know the outcome of the initial
event.
Where, as often, the issue is
about corruption or some other
violation of our collective
integrity the culprits know all they
have to do is to stay the course and
endure the immediate hullabaloo,
their time out in the cold, before
reprieve comes by way of another
distractive scandal. The problem
is always about lack of follow-up
which is an unflattering
commentary on the Nigerian
character to public issues, our
propensity for collective amnesia.
Thus as we mulled and
harangued one another over the
Niger Delta Development
Commission, NDDC, and Niger-
Delta Ministry, NDM, affairs; as
we debated the corruption charge
against erstwhile Chairman of the
Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission and the thick air of
corruption allegation swirling
around Abubakar Malami, the
Attorney-General of the
Federation and Minister of
Justice, we have probably not
heard or forgotten that
Abdulrasheed Maina. He was
former chairman of the Pension
Reform Task Team, PRTT; the man
who turned pension savings,
running into billions of naira of
millions of Nigerians, into his
family patrimony and absconded
to the United Arab Emirate where
he enjoyed a life befitting royalty,
before returning home to take up
a higher appointment for his
criminal heist. In the noisy
euphoria of the Eid el Kabir
celebrations or perhaps in the spirit
of universal goodwill, as we are
such forgiving people, Nigerians
probably chose not to pay
attention to the fact that Maina
has been let out of jail to return to
the cosiness of his home after just
nine months.
Abdulrasheed Maina was the
gatekeeper, the reputable cashier
who was supposed to keep the safe
but ended up helping himself to
the till. He was supposed to help
put in place a reformed pension
scheme that would better the lot of
our army of hapless pensioners.
But Mr. Maina saw this as the rare
opportunity of a lifetime to fleece
the very people whose interest he
was appointed to protect. In
league with others, he defrauded
Nigerians to the tune of N24
billion and went around town in
plain sight of his victims and
scandalised Nigerians under the
Trust is good and
central to human
relationship and
where it is lacking
everything else loses
their value
protective watch of heavily armed
security agents.
Maina was only considered a
person of interest for criminal
prosecution after a near-national
outcry and a public spat
reminiscent of what we are again
seeing among many of Buhari’s
appointees, between Winifred Oyo,
the then Head of Service of the
Federation and Abba Kyari, the
deceased former Chief of Staff to
President Buhari. That was how
high Maina’s reach went - into the
inner recesses of the presidency. A
civil servant! During one of his
court appearances, he showed up
in a wheel chair and actually
wanted the court under Justice
Okon Abang to grant him reprieve
on account of his staged ill-health.
Like Olisa Metuh and Diezani
Allison-Madueke, Maina checked
himself in ill, wheel chair-bound
and armed with a doctor’s report,
as he sat before Justice Okon
Abang.
Professor Keme Ponbei can,
therefore, be told to take a chill
pill: Nigerians are well too
familiar with his script. “Let’s not
forget. He, in cahoots with others,
is alleged to have looted about
N24 billion of pensioners’ funds.
These are mostly senior citizens,
old Nigerians whose life savings
Maina and company decimated,
sending them to their unhappy
graves after decades of slavish
labour. Had they led one of the
murderous groups that prowled
the killing fields of Kigali at the
height of the genocidal war in
1994, Maina and his
collaborators could not have been
more effective as mass murderers.”
These were my words here in this
space on Maina and his
collaborators during his trial.
One hopes his nine months in
jail is not being seen as sufficient
sanction for the evil he perpetrated
against Nigerians. And now he is
out of jail, we must be constantly
reminded that he has close to N24
billion in worth of properties and
money to return to Nigerians. He
still has a lot to answer for.
Just as we are calling attention
to Abdulrasheed Maina, we
should not lose sight of the NDDC,
the NDM and Ibrahim Magu. The
president himself had a word to
share about the allegations of
massive corruption against his
appointees in recent times and
their prosecution by relevant
agencies such as the Justice Ayo
Salami panel. Buhari spoke
during the Eid el Kabir festivities
and he expressed disappointment
that people he trusted abused the
trust he had in them. The betrayal
of trust could indeed be a painful
thing. But in this instance, the
matter could not just be quietly
dismissed.
While a leader, either as
president, governor or what-not,
ultimately takes responsibility for
people they choose to work with,
being the overall boss, they may
not ordinarily be held personally
liable for the action of their
appointees. But in the case of
President Buhari, the situation is
somewhat different. The reason
being that the president more or
less stood as guarantor or surety
for his appointees. He all but
vouched for them and Nigerians
were again and again told to accept
the fact that the president was free
to and could only work with those
he knows, people he could vouch
for. And when many wondered why
such appointees had to be mostly
of a particular gender, religion and
from a particular part of the
country, the response was still the
same: the president can only work
with people he knows.
Trust is good and central to
human relationship and where it
is lacking everything else loses
their value. But even when we trust,
we should watch. To the extent that
the president took a long time
selecting his appointees and stood
by them in a manner that most
leaders would be hesitant to, to
that extent must he bear
responsibility for his choices and
accept that he was wrong. The
good thing is that nobody has
pointed an accusing finger at
President Buhari himself even
though nobody can as equally
vouch for other members of his
immediate and extended family.
C
M
Y
K