Short Essay 32
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
The Fall of Azazi, the Return of Gusau
Boko Haram has claimed its most important victim yet last weekend: The National Security Adviser, A. O. Azazi. For an avowed enemy of the nation’s security apparatus and political system, only the ultimate target remains: the President. If it can manufacture his downfall or the end of his regime, the group would boast that it has proved its mettle.
The fall of Azazi must have surprised many Nigerians. Ah, so the ‘clueless’ and ‘weak’ Jonathan can also bite, they would exclaim. Beyond that, biting his Ijaw brother was least expected. Many people think Azazi did not expect his sudden fall. He has since his resumption as NSA walked firmly on the presidential turf with a mien that was informed by the confidence of an insider and the assurance of a kinsman.
As the weakness in the President became clearer, the arrogance of Azazi as his untouchable protector and indispensable ally was increasing by the day. His display of power reached its peak last week when his contempt for the president was reported online. Somewhere the idea of declaring the state of emergency in Kaduna State was discussed and it was agreed that it was a good idea. To seal its fate however, the former NSA employed a sarcasm that portrayed his level of disdain for his boss, the President. “Where is the president to declare it”, was his reported remark, as if Jonathan was missing in Bermuda Triangle or he has abandoned the hot seat for a mere trivial summit in Brazil.
Azazi left office with the same demeaning impression for the President. After receiving the news of his sacking, his spokesman issued some statements that did not hide his long-standing poor rating of Jonathan’s courage to face challenges squarely. The spokesman said when Azazi suggested that Buhari and some top northerners be invited for ‘questioning’, Jonathan refused and accused the NSA of trying to “scuttle his government.”
As a tribute, I feel compelled to attest that Azazi was different from former NSAs in his relationship with the Nigerian public. Two months ago, he declared the ruling party and the northern presidential aspirants guilty of precipitating the present security crisis in the country. Right or wrong, the public felt that such statements should not have come from a person so close to the President and his NSA for that matter - a Freudian slip, you can say.
The tradition of the NSA in Nigeria as cut by his predecessors is complete silence. They understood that the strength of any security apparatus lies in its secrecy, through leaving the public guessing about its opinion and what it onows about any security issue. Even if Azazi shared that philosophy, the politician in him was not comfortable with it. He preferred activism to mystery. Under him, even the secretive SSS went public, appointing a spokesperson, issuing press statements, parading suspects and holding press conferences. The public could easily discern from these development that there was a competition for its recognition between the SSS and the police in any success, no matter how small, which was recorded in the fight against Boko Haram.
Azazi might have usurped the functions of the police and demystified the office of the NSA. But if it were not for his approach, we would not have been able to read the mind of the administration regarding crucial issues like its perception of the causes of the Boko Haram insurgency. To the delight of journalists, commentators and the opposition, Azazi was always there to let the cat out of the bag.
Well he is gone, for whatever reason and for whatever sin he committed. He is the latest victim of Boko Haram. He is familiar with sackings though, having suffered one as the Chief of Defence Staff under Yar’adua when he was indicted by an army security report on the theft of weapons from his 1 DIV by a Niger Delta militant syndicate. Perhaps, that was the first time he established relationship with Jonathan, who the report fell short of naming as one of the financiers of the gun running activities of the syndicate.
Azazi's return as NSA might be a reward for his ethnic chauvinism. Our own, an Ijaw, possibly, my partner in the illegal arms deal is now the President, Azazi must have calculated rightly when Jonathan became the President. Jonathan too might have wondered if he could trust anyone better than the devil he knows. And on the NSA seat, we saw all sorts of sumptuous security contracts awarded to Niger Deta militants, the latest being the concession of our maritime security to them by the Jonathan administration. We also witnessed the largest allocation of our budget to national security in our history.
Azazi may now be bitter for losing the top security job but he can still keep himself busy by paying full attention to the execution of those security contracts that were fronted for him by Tampolo and other Niger Delta militants. With his departure, the dream of Niger Delta republic has suffered a serious setback. It is clear that Nigeria is bigger than his dream. Safe journey, sir.
At his heels comes Sambo Dasuki, a lesser known person from the Sokoto royal family. Compared to General Azazi, Sambo is a dwarf: a junior officer who retired almost two decades ago as a colonel. Politically, the highest position he held in the army was the ADC to President Babangida. He was nowhere close to commanding a division or becoming Nigeria’s chief of defence staff. Likewise, I doubt if he ever dreamt of becoming the NSA.
Now, if the NSA job has put his predecessor general to shame during these trying times, how did the President got convinced that Sambo would succeed in disabling the bombs of Boko Haram and silencing their guns? Look at the gamble: apart from his political appointment as the Managing Director of Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Corporation, the new NSA has nothing in hand to prove that he is competent in heading the security apparatus of country as it is today. At its face value, one is tempted to think that the appointment of Sambo is one of the most stupid things that Jonathan ever did as the President. So are we heading for the rocks, again?
Hold your breath. we are not. The President is not stupid. Come with me.
The reason is simple. Some things we get by birth. Many others we get by hard work. Few we get by association. Sambo Dasuki, I am tempted to believe, got this appointment by his marital link to the longest serving NSA, General Aliyu Gusau (rtd). Gusau is married to Sambo’s sister, the wife of late Aliyu Dasuki, may God have mercy on him.
In the past few months, there have been reports that Gusau was resisting the pressure to return to the NSA office. Gusau might have calculated the cool reception that Nigerians would accord him if he were to return for the simple fact that he has been there three times before. Man is hardly excited with the familiar. Also, he might have been hindered morally by his contest for the PDP presidential ticket against Jonathan under whom he last served as NSA. The idea of a proxy is therefore apt. Sambo would sit in as the figurehead NSA, definitely, while Gusau would ably determine the security operations of the country.
From his position at the top, Jonathan must have perceived that Boko Haram is inching closer and closer to him. It has caused the sacking of all categories of police and security chiefs. With some clerics warning him of an impending war, the President must have realized that he could be the next victim. The nation has, with distinctions, fulfilled all the requirements for a coup d’etat. The condition is so critical that he will not hesitate to call for the assistance of anyone perceived to be capable of making a difference between democracy and military rule.
It is easy to see the idea of involving Gusau as based purely on the merit of the former NSA. However, it surely goes beyond that. I do not also believe that it is a gesture made to appeal Northerners to dismiss the notion that the inability of the government to handle the situation is not a conspiracy to destroy the North.
In my humble opinion that the return of Gusau was due to two reasons. One, from what Azazi said two months ago – that violating the principle of zoning in PDP was responsible for the present security challenges in the country and that no one expects that those aggrieved would fail to respond by creating difficulties for the Jonathan administration – it is clear that he meant that Boko Haram is recruited by those who lost the ticket to Jonathan. So they must know the secret behind it.
Nobody expects that Azazi will make such serious accusations without any support from the hundreds of files he has treated on the matter. Jonathan, according Azazi’s spokesman yesterday, has resisted the fomer NSA’s advice that such people be called for questioning. Gusau, being one of those aspirants, must have made it to Azazi’s list conspirators.
Jonathan here took a directly opposite route. If he cannot invite Gusau for questioning, it would not be a bad idea to saddle him with the challenge of restoring security to the country.
The second reason is that possibly few people, if any, in our security domain would know about Boko Haram than Gusau. It was under the tenure of Obasanjo that Boko Haram was conceived, hatched and nourished to full growth. The first we heard about the group was when it called itself the “Nigerian Taliban” after it clashed with the police in Yobe in the early 2000s. Many of the arrests made then turned out to be sons of influential people in the old Borno State. The suspects were eventually released. From there, the group moved its headquarters to Maiduguri and enjoyed the support of people like Governor Sheriff. Perhaps few people knew that it would turn so dangerous. But the SSS director then, Gadzama, has raised sufficient alarms which, for unknown reasons, were not heeded to. It took the vacation of Obasanjo from that office, along with NSA Gusau, before the authorities could provoke a violent engagement with the group resulting in the present crisis.
Why was the group not stopped from blooming and fruition during Obasanjo still remains a mystery to many of us. But it will not be a mistake to assume that the person at the helm of our security structure during the formative years of the group clearly knows its dynamics and the forces behind it. Who else is then best qualified for the job than him?
So from whichever angle one looks at it, appointing a proxy to Gusau would make a lot of sense for a scared Jonathan who is presently confined by the terror to the Villa. By appointing Sambo Dasuki, Jonathan might have bought some time, but only a little. How far he can run before the monster that caught up with those immediately below him also catches up with him is a distance known only to his destiny.
Finally, I would like to put this question to my readers. Should the new NSA fail to meet the expectations of Jonathan and Nigeria precariously attains a tipping point, would the country be ready to sacrifice Jonathan in order to avert the impending disaster or would it prefer to go into an indefinable civil war and dismemberment simply to maintain him as the President of a democratic Nigeria?
Jonathan would be keen to know your answers. But he must be under no illusions as to what they would be. Nigerians have answered such questions each time the country reaches the brink in the past. And consistently, the answers have never been in favour of the presidents. This one too will not be different, I suppose.
Bauchi
24 June 2012
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
General Aliyu Gusau: Return Home, Please
Gen. Aliyu Gusau, Return Home Pls.
Monsieur General! That is the name my friend, whom of course you know very well, and I call you whenever you feature in our discussion. And I must confess that you do so very often. This is no crime sir; anybody at the top has a quiet nickname at the bottom, though he may hardly know it.
The decision to write this piece came by coincidence; that was when I heard the news that the president has sacked NEPA executives while I was reading a copy of cover story of TheNews magazine titled “Obasanjo Trapped”. The story was essentially written to denigrate you. What a coincidence, because the first page of the story in the Magazine was precisely talking about the purported role of the MD of NEPA - Eng. Suleiman, our friend Nasir El-Rufai, and yourself jointly played in frustrating the Independent Power Project of Chief Bola Tinubu WASC (GCI (?), B.Sc. Economics (Chicago (?), B.Sc. Business Admin. (Chicago (?), CPA (?) NYSC (Lagos (?). The coincidence was so striking that I felt compelled to plead for your return home.
Sir, it is getting too much. This government is not on the course of fulfilling the promise that the President made to the nation in his maiden address. This much is clear. The problem lies with the diagnosis made in the media on who is responsible for this failure. Is it the president himself – a person who has occupied that seat before, or someone else? As usual, the press is dumping the heap of failure at the doorstep of the north – the very north that it claimed some few months ago has lost control of power.
It has concocted a theory putting you right at the center, a disturbing effort to shift blame indeed. I seek your indulgence to reproduce here some three paragraphs from the cover story of TheNews (20 March 2000) for the benefit of my readers:
“The dilemma into which he (the President) has been pigeon-holed is two-pronged. The first, internal, is virtually a one-man wrecking crew constituted by President Obasanjo’s National Security Adviser, Alhaji Mohammed Aliyu Gusau. Babangida is coordinating the external forces…bla bla…
“A senator of the Alliance for Democracy who spoke with TheNews attributed most of the hiccups the Obasanjo government is experiencing to skewed security reports from Gusau’s office. The NSA is said to be working at cross-purposes with Obasanjo. Instances were given of the bloody skirmishes involving the Oodua People’s Congress, the Odi massacre and the recent Shariah riots…
“The crisis facing Obasanjo, according to sources, fits perfectly into his plans. The more the nation burns, the more Obasanjo’s image is taken to the cleaners. Sources in Aso Rock spoke of what is in all this for Gusau. ‘The man is the only general among his peers that has not made it to the zenith in Aso Rock. So, he is positioning himself to occupy the hot seat in 2003.’ To do that, Obasanjo’s credibility must be rubbished so irreparably that there will be no prospects for a re-election.”
Nothing can be farther from the truth. That much TheNews was ready to concede, albeit quietly. I say so because halfway through the same story, the writer contradicted himself when he proved in categorical terms how the president is not helping matters either. He was particular on the President’s penchant to squander: the request to the senate to raise his vote for overseas trips from N486million to N1.5billion; entertainment and hospitality allowance to be increased from N230million to N500million; N8billion to purchase a second hand air bus and N900million to re-engine a Boeing 727 aircraft; N10 billion on his poverty alleviation program that is, according to the writer, nothing more than a sham, comparable to NDE and DFRRI of Babangida.
Now one would ask, what has this register of squander got to do with the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA)? What purpose does it serve the argument of the writer that the duo of the NSA and IBB is the bane of Obasanjo’s regime? What is certain is that Obasanjo himself cannot be extricated from his own shortcomings and that of some of his ministers. It is time for both his critics and worshippers to know what type of person he is. He has the disposition, in my judgment, for big appearance, big money and big projects, everything grande, like the French. If they were expecting him to be different from his immediate predecessors, a rethink is inevitable. As for me, I was left in no doubt since he appointed his cabinet.
Nor could the president claim ignorance on the entertaining and ongoing corruption scandals that are reported daily in the press. When the history of this regime will be written at the end of its tenure, it is not your purported desire to succeed Obasanjo that will sabotage the chance for his re-election, but his squander, blunders and fumbles on the one hand, and the corruption of his ministers and accolades on the other.
His supporters, exemplified by the southern press, know this very well. They are now jittery that some people are already compiling a list of such corruption activities. In the same issue of TheNews, it is reported that, according to Godwin Daboh, “massive dossiers the camps had acquired over the years on key actors in the Obasanjo administration will be readily employed to discredit Obasanjo wherever his enemies deem fit. Currently, every kobo spent by any member of the President’s cabinet and the main target himself and contracts awarded by the administration ‘are systematically and discreetly monitored” by the conspirators. In one instance, the hounds unearthed that one of Obasanjo’s ministers “purchased an item originally worth N125,000 for N346,000 per unit.”
Why should Obasanjo and his host of admirers jitter because an angel or a devil is preparing such a dossier? Do they think that after all what the country went through in the past sixteen years there will be a leader that will just come and go ‘un-dossiered’? Their primary concern right now, in my view, should not be to bother about this or that dossier. There has to be dossiers since this is a democracy, or so is claimed. But the government itself must resist the temptation to be corrupt in the first place. If the President would, as he chooses, turn a blind eye to his own shortcomings or that of his ministers, he should have only himself to blame, not you, Monsieur General.
And this brings us to the issue of probing past regimes that this government has undertaken. I feel it has been overtaken by events. In some cases it will even lead to an embarrassment for the government. It will serve itself a better purpose, for lack of moral standing, if the present government looks forward and tackles the corruption in its midst than engage in faultfinding the past. And it must not run the risk of digging a trench that will be too deep for its height, setting a standard that it will not live up to and with which it will certainly be found guilty in the near future.
What Haruna Adamu’s team is doing at the PTF must be seen in this context. Their faultfinding mission will definitely boomerang. The government must be too foolish not to know that. I tell you that, going by the low standards of the present regime, the exercise is completely useless. Meanwhile, Haruna will do himself more justice if he restricts himself to his term of reference. This is a point which I think even the President has made at a time. I say this because your name is often associated, wrongly I believe, with what Haruna Adamu is doing currently, that you are out to tarnish the image of General Buhari at all cost. And Buhari has said many times that he is ready to defend himself before any panel, from his days as a head-boy in the secondary school to his tenure as PTF chairman.
The south is looking for a scapegoat to cover Obasanjo’s failure, and they are making you one. Just imagine that even the woeful failure of Bola Ige is skewed to implicate you. Hmmm. The guy should resign and be a full time “Hutu” columnist. He is hereby welcome by another who is a “Tutsi”.
Since they are accusing you now for taking the President hostage, it is better to call it quit, allowing them to play their game of failure to completion alone. That should be now, because they would then have three years to prove their much-trumpeted competence in your absence.
In fact, I will not be surprised if by the time this article is published the President has listened to the advice of TheNews and sent you packing. The magazine has boasted of having his ear. But before then, please accept my congratulations in advance. If, on the other hand, it turns out that you are still on the NSA job, I will maintain my stand that the headache from the accusations is not worth it. Your effort in convincing the President to run for the office and in seeing him through the electioneering campaign is enough a contribution that will be acknowledged. This is the chance for the south. Let them have the freedom to play their game alone.
Return home sir. Retournez, mon Monsieur General. S’il vous plait!
Monsieur General! That is the name my friend, whom of course you know very well, and I call you whenever you feature in our discussion. And I must confess that you do so very often. This is no crime sir; anybody at the top has a quiet nickname at the bottom, though he may hardly know it.
The decision to write this piece came by coincidence; that was when I heard the news that the president has sacked NEPA executives while I was reading a copy of cover story of TheNews magazine titled “Obasanjo Trapped”. The story was essentially written to denigrate you. What a coincidence, because the first page of the story in the Magazine was precisely talking about the purported role of the MD of NEPA - Eng. Suleiman, our friend Nasir El-Rufai, and yourself jointly played in frustrating the Independent Power Project of Chief Bola Tinubu WASC (GCI (?), B.Sc. Economics (Chicago (?), B.Sc. Business Admin. (Chicago (?), CPA (?) NYSC (Lagos (?). The coincidence was so striking that I felt compelled to plead for your return home.
Sir, it is getting too much. This government is not on the course of fulfilling the promise that the President made to the nation in his maiden address. This much is clear. The problem lies with the diagnosis made in the media on who is responsible for this failure. Is it the president himself – a person who has occupied that seat before, or someone else? As usual, the press is dumping the heap of failure at the doorstep of the north – the very north that it claimed some few months ago has lost control of power.
It has concocted a theory putting you right at the center, a disturbing effort to shift blame indeed. I seek your indulgence to reproduce here some three paragraphs from the cover story of TheNews (20 March 2000) for the benefit of my readers:
“The dilemma into which he (the President) has been pigeon-holed is two-pronged. The first, internal, is virtually a one-man wrecking crew constituted by President Obasanjo’s National Security Adviser, Alhaji Mohammed Aliyu Gusau. Babangida is coordinating the external forces…bla bla…
“A senator of the Alliance for Democracy who spoke with TheNews attributed most of the hiccups the Obasanjo government is experiencing to skewed security reports from Gusau’s office. The NSA is said to be working at cross-purposes with Obasanjo. Instances were given of the bloody skirmishes involving the Oodua People’s Congress, the Odi massacre and the recent Shariah riots…
“The crisis facing Obasanjo, according to sources, fits perfectly into his plans. The more the nation burns, the more Obasanjo’s image is taken to the cleaners. Sources in Aso Rock spoke of what is in all this for Gusau. ‘The man is the only general among his peers that has not made it to the zenith in Aso Rock. So, he is positioning himself to occupy the hot seat in 2003.’ To do that, Obasanjo’s credibility must be rubbished so irreparably that there will be no prospects for a re-election.”
Nothing can be farther from the truth. That much TheNews was ready to concede, albeit quietly. I say so because halfway through the same story, the writer contradicted himself when he proved in categorical terms how the president is not helping matters either. He was particular on the President’s penchant to squander: the request to the senate to raise his vote for overseas trips from N486million to N1.5billion; entertainment and hospitality allowance to be increased from N230million to N500million; N8billion to purchase a second hand air bus and N900million to re-engine a Boeing 727 aircraft; N10 billion on his poverty alleviation program that is, according to the writer, nothing more than a sham, comparable to NDE and DFRRI of Babangida.
Now one would ask, what has this register of squander got to do with the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA)? What purpose does it serve the argument of the writer that the duo of the NSA and IBB is the bane of Obasanjo’s regime? What is certain is that Obasanjo himself cannot be extricated from his own shortcomings and that of some of his ministers. It is time for both his critics and worshippers to know what type of person he is. He has the disposition, in my judgment, for big appearance, big money and big projects, everything grande, like the French. If they were expecting him to be different from his immediate predecessors, a rethink is inevitable. As for me, I was left in no doubt since he appointed his cabinet.
Nor could the president claim ignorance on the entertaining and ongoing corruption scandals that are reported daily in the press. When the history of this regime will be written at the end of its tenure, it is not your purported desire to succeed Obasanjo that will sabotage the chance for his re-election, but his squander, blunders and fumbles on the one hand, and the corruption of his ministers and accolades on the other.
His supporters, exemplified by the southern press, know this very well. They are now jittery that some people are already compiling a list of such corruption activities. In the same issue of TheNews, it is reported that, according to Godwin Daboh, “massive dossiers the camps had acquired over the years on key actors in the Obasanjo administration will be readily employed to discredit Obasanjo wherever his enemies deem fit. Currently, every kobo spent by any member of the President’s cabinet and the main target himself and contracts awarded by the administration ‘are systematically and discreetly monitored” by the conspirators. In one instance, the hounds unearthed that one of Obasanjo’s ministers “purchased an item originally worth N125,000 for N346,000 per unit.”
Why should Obasanjo and his host of admirers jitter because an angel or a devil is preparing such a dossier? Do they think that after all what the country went through in the past sixteen years there will be a leader that will just come and go ‘un-dossiered’? Their primary concern right now, in my view, should not be to bother about this or that dossier. There has to be dossiers since this is a democracy, or so is claimed. But the government itself must resist the temptation to be corrupt in the first place. If the President would, as he chooses, turn a blind eye to his own shortcomings or that of his ministers, he should have only himself to blame, not you, Monsieur General.
And this brings us to the issue of probing past regimes that this government has undertaken. I feel it has been overtaken by events. In some cases it will even lead to an embarrassment for the government. It will serve itself a better purpose, for lack of moral standing, if the present government looks forward and tackles the corruption in its midst than engage in faultfinding the past. And it must not run the risk of digging a trench that will be too deep for its height, setting a standard that it will not live up to and with which it will certainly be found guilty in the near future.
What Haruna Adamu’s team is doing at the PTF must be seen in this context. Their faultfinding mission will definitely boomerang. The government must be too foolish not to know that. I tell you that, going by the low standards of the present regime, the exercise is completely useless. Meanwhile, Haruna will do himself more justice if he restricts himself to his term of reference. This is a point which I think even the President has made at a time. I say this because your name is often associated, wrongly I believe, with what Haruna Adamu is doing currently, that you are out to tarnish the image of General Buhari at all cost. And Buhari has said many times that he is ready to defend himself before any panel, from his days as a head-boy in the secondary school to his tenure as PTF chairman.
The south is looking for a scapegoat to cover Obasanjo’s failure, and they are making you one. Just imagine that even the woeful failure of Bola Ige is skewed to implicate you. Hmmm. The guy should resign and be a full time “Hutu” columnist. He is hereby welcome by another who is a “Tutsi”.
Since they are accusing you now for taking the President hostage, it is better to call it quit, allowing them to play their game of failure to completion alone. That should be now, because they would then have three years to prove their much-trumpeted competence in your absence.
In fact, I will not be surprised if by the time this article is published the President has listened to the advice of TheNews and sent you packing. The magazine has boasted of having his ear. But before then, please accept my congratulations in advance. If, on the other hand, it turns out that you are still on the NSA job, I will maintain my stand that the headache from the accusations is not worth it. Your effort in convincing the President to run for the office and in seeing him through the electioneering campaign is enough a contribution that will be acknowledged. This is the chance for the south. Let them have the freedom to play their game alone.
Return home sir. Retournez, mon Monsieur General. S’il vous plait!
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