I write this ahead of Nigeria’s re-scheduled presidential and National Assembly elections of February 23, 2019. It will be available after the election but before the results, and I take the opportunity to examine what we have learned, or not, about justice and emotion in the past four years.
I do not know if the elections will be peaceful or even democratic, as President Muhammadu Buhari has authorized the army and the police to kill anyone who snatches a ballot box, as if box-snatching were the only problem to plan for.
Illegally accessing a ballot box is an electoral offence, and violators ought to face the law. But the army has no role in national elections, either: not supervision, not logistics, not security. Its deployment by Buhari is therefore illegal, and fraught with danger.
Buhari’s order is one additional reason why Nigeria’s 2019 elections are being closely watched by people all over the world. But one of the most-interested in the election, for obvious reasons, will be one Retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki, who served in the preceding government as National Security Adviser (NSA).
Mr. Dasuki, remember, was arrested within two months of Buhari’s inauguration in 2015, following his indictment by a presidential panel which investigated arms procurement under the previous government. He was accused of diverting over $2bn which had been meant for the war against Boko Haram; awarding phantom defence contracts, including for the purchase of 12 helicopters and four fighter jets; and distributing some of the money to privileged politicians.
Charged along with Dasuki were former Sokoto State governor Attahiru Bafarawa; his son, Sagir Bafarawa; former Director of Finance and Administration in the Office of the NSA, Shuaibu Salisu; former Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yuguda, and a company, Dalhatu Investment, which belonged to the younger Bafarawa.
Prior to his arrest by the EFCC, Dasuki was already facing charges of illegal possession of firearms and money laundering. He became the first and most significant official of the Jonathan government to appear in court under Buhari’s widely-expected anti-corruption war.
As the saga unfolded, several politicians were unveiled as having received chunks of the money, or at least, of having received money from the former NSA.
They included Olu Falae of the Social Democratic Party; Mohammed Bello Haliru, former Minister of Defence and former acting National Chairman of the PDP, and his son; Adamu Mu’azu, another former PDP National Chairman; Jim Nwobodo, former Anambra State governor; Olisah Metuh, former PDP national spokesman; Rasheed Ladoja, former governor of Oyo State; Peter Odili, former governor of Rivers; former PDP chieftain Bode George; Raymond Dokpesi, chairman of DAAR Communications; Jafaru Lawal Isa, former military governor of Kaduna State; former PDP chieftain Anthony Anenih, who died last year. Nobody denied receiving the money; they merely explained they passed it on to others.
In February 2016, the story expanded, as it was learned that the Office of the ONSA had withdrawn $47m (N10bn) from an oil bloc account in the Central Bank to be given to delegates to the special 2015 convention of the PDP convened to adopt Mr. Jonathan as sole candidate for the presidential election.
Two months later, in April 2016, the story grew even bigger, the EFCC confirming that the money involved in the scandal involved not only the ONSA but former and serving military chiefs, and that the figure was over $15bn.
“The $2.1bn was just for one transaction,” a source told a newspaper. “Many of these military officers set up companies for the purpose of diverting money meant for the prosecution of the anti-insurgency war.”
Those included a former Chief of Defence, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, now deceased, who was alleged to have received N3.9 billion from Dasuki; and former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu. Along with two others, he faces a fraud trial of N21.4bn.
Despite all these dimensions, it is the Dasuki story that has run the entire length of the Buhari administration. The retired colonel has faced charges in four courts, each of which granted him bail. Still, the government continued to hold him.
In October 2016, the ECOWAS Court declared Dasuki’s arrest and detention to be unlawful and arbitrary, and awarded N15m in damages against the government. Still, the government continued to hold him.
He has argued – and he may well have been lying – that in the disbursement of the funds attributed to him, he had only obeyed the instructions of President Jonathan, who approved all the expenses incurred by his office. “I am ready to prove in court how we complied with the directive of the ex-President,” he declared.
But he has not been granted that opportunity, which may be a strong clue that the message is power, rather than the law; and the objective punishment, not justice.
Furthermore, in the four years of Dasuki’s ordeal, Jonathan has not once been asked a single question concerning Dasuki, or his knowledge of the disbursement of the arms’ funds, let alone any other accounts.
All the indications are that he will not be asked anything, Buhari having shown neither interest nor capacity in attacking corruption structurally, symptomatically or substantially. It is also important to remember that an EFCC official disclosed in 2017 that there is an agreement Buhari would not arrest Jonathan or his wife.
This is despite permanently blaming Jonathan and the PDP for his own failures, and despite telling his biographer, John Paden, that he has Jonathan letters by which the former president requested and used illegal “off-budget funds.”
The Dasuki situation is also bookended by various unethical scenarios, including an army of openly corrupt men at the top of the president’s party and his inner circles who enjoy Buhari’s protection and have made his game a joke.
Still, Dasuki remains behind bars: unfettered in law but not by politics. This is why the next couple of days will be historic: if Buhari wins, Dasuki will remain behind bars for the next four years because clearly, his predicament is less about corruption than about his role in the 1985 coup that booted Buhari from power to a house with two television channels.
If Atiku Abubakar wins, Dasuki will most likely be free within days of his inauguration as the new government “obeys” the courts.
Whether Buhari lasts the next four months or next four years, history will examine closely his injury of the democratic principle that has divided Nigeria not between what is right and what is wrong, but between who is strong and who is weak; who is in control and who is to be controlled.
Future governments would do well to remember that not only is their time in control very brief, but that a dictatorial mindset contaminates the concept of democracy. What makes democracy work is the rule of law, but it is useless if someone refuses to accept the separation of powers.
Finally, what about all the other Nigerians who collected money from ONSA who have never been named? It is not Dasuki who is suppressing those, and similar, records.
• @SonalaOlumhense
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