NIA: Ex-DG Dauda fights back and opens a can of worms

Ambassador Mohammed Dauda, former director general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), has alleged that his removal from office was orchestrated by those he refused to release public funds to for their personal uses.

In a statement in Abuja, the former Ambassador to Chad described himself as a victim of media hirelings unleashed on him by the leadership of the agency, reports Daily Sun.

Shedding light on the controversy surrounding the $44 million that was moved from the vaults of the agency, Dauda explained: “As I earlier explained in one of my responses to the National Assembly’s inquiries on the $44 million, I wish to restate that I moved the money to the office of the National Security Adviser for three reasons – for safe keep, after Gen Jaafaru, who was sent purposely to NIA; to safe guard the controversial money (which was not actually part of our budgetary allocation) but was suddenly withdrawn back to ONSA, and also to create a witness out of it, being the supervisory office of all Security Agencies, under the law.

“I knew that to be a big risk but given the circumstances I found myself in, where highly placed individuals, including those who eventually determined my fate showed unreserved interest in siphoning the money, by asking me to make available parts of it for their personal uses, I felt a compelling urge to save public funds, by taking it away from the reach of these people (even if temporarily), who were to take charge of the agency following my exit.”

Dauda was recently re-instated as DG of the agency by the Abuja division of the Court of Appeal.

He acted as the DG of the NIA from November 2017 to January 2018 when he was replaced by a substantive DG.

Dauda subsequently challenged his removal in court, saying his dismissal was wrong and did not follow due process.

He had argued that no special management staff of the disciplinary committee (SMSDC) investigated the charges against him and that he was not given any fair hearing afterwards.

In an earlier judgement delivered by the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN), Justice Olufunke Anuwe ordered that Dauda should be reinstated as the head of the agency and that he should be paid his salaries and entitlements from March 2018 till date after it found that his dismissal violated the NIA Act.

In the statement, Dauda further attributed his sack to lack of godfatherism in government to fight for him.

He further alleged that the bad press unleashed against him by the current leadership was a mere plot to cover up the crass ineptitude, nepotism, impunity, tyranny and administrative rascality and impunity taking place at the nation’s apex Intelligence agency.

“Although it is an open secret that the NIA has been suffering bad press, following my removal as the Ag. Director General and my subsequent purported dismissal from the NIA, I find it rather strange that I am being painted as the culprit behind the negative media, to the extent that I have been branded a saboteur of national security, for choosing to remain silent in the face of all the vilifications; an issue that the Federal Court of Appeal, have cleared me thoroughly.

“Let me state for the avoidance of doubt that there had been serious pressures mounted on me not to appear before the committee by people I had mentioned in my earlier report before another investigative agency, about the $44 million in question. I even received several threats but I eventually honored the invitation and made my presentation on oath before the committee, after which I was asked to submit 17 copies of my presentation to the Committee. Whatever became of the report I made, was never known to me. It is therefore very unfair and most uncharitable to accuse me of leaking my presentation (which they called petition) to the media or to the public: whichever was the case.

“Permit me to place it on record that I did not write any petition to the National Assembly. I did not leak the contents of my presentation before the Committee to the press or the public neither did I ever release documents or postings. As a matter of fact, I do not have access to any NIA documents since my removal in 2018, and I could not have leaked what I did not have. I have been subjected to all sorts of media trials, ostensibly sponsored by the NIA leadership, through sponsored articles and reports: thereby subjecting me to further psychological tortures. The facts about what was happening in the NIA was deliberately shielded from the Government, making its decisions prejudiced against me, just as some public perception has been poisoned against me.

“In seeming further display of their ignorance, or out of sheer mischief, the sponsored authors opined that, I acted for only one month as Ag. Director General of the NIA. I was there for 54 eventful days from 7th November, 2017 to the date I effectively handed over. But even if I had acted for only one day, no one said, I was removed for incompetence, corruption or ineptitude, or that the person that they were in a hurry to bring, as my replacement, was better or more qualified than me. The records of what I did in the agency and their impact on the Agency and its Staffers is a story for another day.

“They accused me of shunning the disciplinary committee set up by the present DG to probe me. As an intelligence officer, who has vast contacts within and without the NIA, I was aware that the said disciplinary committee now legally declared illegal, by all the Courts, had a preconceived mission, which was to recommend for my dismissal and to rubbish my career. Looking at the assemblage of the distressed hatchet men coopted to be on the committee (including a convicted self confessed criminal, who stole and refunded more than N500m from Falcon Eye Project, at the ONSA), coupled with the fact that it negated laid down rules as contained in the NIA establishment Act(CAPS 278), 1986, I decided not to glorify their findings by giving it a semblance of legitimacy and fairness, by attending.

“The coinage, Special Management Staff Disciplinary Committee (SMSDC) was not only strange to our procedures at the NIA but a negation of the law, just as the assemblage of its members completely fell out of the provisions of the National Securities Act (CAPS 278), 1986: which governs such matters. The Act does not give any retired Directors any role in pure administrative schedules at the NIA, to wit recruitment, vetting or discipline, neither does the NSC Act, obliges the agency to continue footing bills for medical checkups, children’s’ school fees, family burials and many others, of officers long after their disengagement, as is presently being done, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Dollars, being shared to Traditional Rulers and family and friends all over the Country, all in the futile efforts of the DG to legitimize, what is illegitimate and Lauder his badly soiled corruption ridden image.”