Hunter Becomes the Hunted, House Investigates Arms Probe Panel

Tobi Soniyi

In what looks like a displacement of the Presidential Arm Probe Panel headed by Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Jon Ode from the top of the Pecking Order, the House of Representatives has mandated a joint Committee on National Security and Intelligence and Public Procurement to investigate the presidential arms probe panel.

The arms probe panel was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari at the outset of his administration to investigate the procurement of arms and ammunition by successive governments.
Before its disbandment last year, the panel indicted several former government officials, serving and retired military personnel, individuals and companies for the mismanagement and diversion of funds meant for the procurement of arms for the war against the insurgency in the North-east.

Several of those indicted are currently facing prosecution in various courts in the country.
One of the notable persons indicted by the panel include the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki, who has been in detention for more than one and a half years, despite bail orders granted by three courts.

According to a statement on Tuesday by media consultant, PRNigeria, the joint committee chaired by both Hon. Aminu Sani Jaji of the Committee on National Security and Intelligence and Hon. Oluwole Oke of the Committee on Public Procurement, which has begun investigation of the probe panel, has called for the submission of written memoranda/position papers from top government officials and the 241 indicted firms.

A member of the committee, who did not want his name in print, said other stakeholders and the general public with relevant information on the matter have been requested to make submissions before holding the public hearings.

Those officially invited to make submissions on their memoranda include the chairman and members of the arms probe panel, NSA, Defence Minister, Finance Minister, Interior Minister, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Accountant General of the Federation and Auditor General of the Federation.

Others invited include Secretary to the Government of the Federation, service chiefs and ex-service chiefs from 2010 to 2016, Director General, Department of State Services (DSS), Director General, National Intelligence Agency (NIA), acting Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Director General, Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Director General of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM), Director General, Industrial Training Fund (ITF), and Managing Director, Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

The arms probe panel was inaugurated in 2015 by the president to investigate the procurement of hardware and ammunition in the armed forces from 2007 to 2015 and to identify irregularities and make recommendations for streamlining the procurement process in the military.

The panel submitted its first interim report in November 2015 and presented the second report in January 2016, following which Buhari ordered the EFCC to investigate some serving and retired military officers, mainly from the Nigerian Air Force (NAF).
The president also directed investigations into the roles of the officers as well as some companies and their directors in fundamental breaches associated with the procurement by the Office of the NSA and the Nigerian Air Force.

During their investigation, some members of the arms probe panel were accused of receiving bribes from individuals and companies that were being investigated by the same panel.
One of the members, Air Commodore Umaru Mohammed (rtd.), was later arrested and detained by DSS for money laundering and illegal possession of firearms.

Some serving security officials also accused the panel of criminalising critical institutions and indicting groups and individuals through media trials without being arraigned in courts of competent jurisdiction where the accused could defend themselves.

Apart from AVM Jon Ode who was the chairman, other members of the disbanded arms probe panel included Rear Admiral J.A. Aikhomu (rtd.), Rear Admiral. E. Ogbor (rtd.), Brig.-Gen. L. Adekagun (rtd.), Brig.-Gen. M. Aminu-Kano (rtd.), Brig.-Gen. N. Rimtip (rtd.), the late Rear Admiral T.D. Ikoli; Air Cdre U. Mohammed (rtd.), Air Cdre I. Shafi’I, Col. A.A. Ariyibi, Group Capt. C.A. Oriaku (rtd.), acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, and Brig.-Gen Y.I. Shalangwa as its secretary.

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Ex-wife of Factional Boko Haram Leader Caught Loitering in Maiduguri

Michael Olugbode in Maiduguri

A suspected suicide bomber and ex-wife of a factional leader of the Boko Haram sect, Mamman Nur, was recently apprehended by officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Borno State.

The girl, Fatima Kabir, 15, married Mamman Nur as the first of three husbands she had while she was in captivity for two years with the terror group.
Now four months pregnant, Fatima has also tested positive for HIV.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Fatima claimed that she hails from Gwoza town and was abducted by the insurgents and taken to Sambisa forest three years ago.
She said: “I am an indigene of Gwoza town. One day, Boko Haram stormed our town, killed many people and kidnapped me.
“Since then, I have been living in the dreaded forest and was married from one Boko commander to another.

“I was tired of that horrifying life, so one day I resolved to flee and succeeded.
“As I was running, I saw a team of military men and quickly rushed to them and narrated my ordeal.”
She added: “They sympathised with me and took me to their colleagues in Gwoza, who in turn conveyed me to Kano motor park in Maiduguri and gave me the sum of N3,000 and said I should use it for food and transport to look for my parents in one of the camps for the internally displaced persons.
“So while staying there night fell and I became stranded with no where to go, until some operatives of the civil defence corps apprehended us and brought us here.”

Fatima further revealed that after her marriage to the factional leader of Boko Haram, she was married to two other insurgents, who later abandoned her and fled from Sambisa.
The other teenage girl arrested alongside Fatima, Amina Salisu, corraborated Fatima’s story that they were stranded before their arrest and never planned to detonate any explosive.
Amina said she hails from Gulak town in Adamawa State but was abducted and taken to Sambisa two years ago.

She said she was married to two insurgents during her captivity.
The Borno State commandant of the NSCDC, Ibrahim Abdu, during the briefing said his operatives had intercepted the two teenage girls.

Abdu, while parading the girls at a press briefing in Maiduguri, said they were suspected to have been smuggled from Sambisa forest into the town to wreak havoc on innocent civilians.
He said one of the girls, Fatima, confessed to have been the ex-wife of Mamman Nur and that medical tests had confirmed that she was carrying a four-month-old pregnancy and infected with HIV.
He added that the other lady, Amina, equally admitted that she was married to separate Boko Haram members in Sambisa forest.

The commandant further revealed that the girls were found loitering at the popular Kano bus park in the Maiduguri metropolis and that upon extensive interrogation, they confessed that they were sneaked into Maiduguri for possible suicide attacks.
The commandant explained that after proper investigation, the command would hand them over to the appropriate authorities for the next line of action.

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Famine :World Must Aid Nigeria to Avoid departure of many people

The devastation wrought by Boko Haram, which has left millions of people in North-east Nigeria on the brink of famine, could exacerbate Europe’s migration crisis if the world fails to act urgently, the country’s chief humanitarian coordinator has said.

Nearly five million people in the region are desperately hungry and risk starving to death this year if they do not receive food aid, according to figures from the United Nations.

This could drive even more Nigerians to flee the country and attempt the perilous journey to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, unless the international community ramps up support and funds, said Ayoade Alakija, Nigeria’s humanitarian coordinator.
“With so many people facing famine, this is the wrong time to criticise us and simply say ‘You are the giant of Africa’.

“The world could see a mass exodus from a country of 180 million people if support is not given, and fast … if people facing famine fall into famine,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

While the European Union has been strained by the influx of 1.6 million refugees and migrants between 2014 and 2016, a greater number of people in North-east Nigeria, some 1.8 million, are displaced and unable or unwilling to go home, Alakija added.

“For Nigeria, this is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis of large magnitude. We, and the wider world, were largely unprepared for it,” she said, adding that Nigeria was struggling to respond as it deals with its first recession in 25 years.
Jihadist group Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency to carve out an Islamic state in North-east Nigeria has killed at least 20,000 people and forced some two million to flee their homes.

Tackling the Root Cause

The state’s handling of the situation in North-east Nigeria has been hit by allegations of officials stealing and selling aid, and having sex with women in exchange for food.
Alakija said the Borno State Government had taken measures to improve protection efforts – such as having more female officials in camps for the displaced – and tackle corruption.

“But you need to put such incidents in the wider context of widespread suffering and desperation,” she said. “We need to tackle the root cause of the crisis, not just these symptoms.”
The humanitarian response has also been fraught at times due to tensions between the state and international aid agencies.

The president’s spokesman in December said aid agencies, including the United Nations, were exaggerating levels of hunger to get more funding from donors, while Borno’s governor in January said many of the groups were profiting from the crisis.

“This arose from a lack of understanding and the fact that Nigeria has never faced this kind of situation before … there is no denial of the scale of the crisis within the country, but rather incredulity around what has been going on,” Alakija said.

“For the first six years of the insurgency, the previous government did not adequately acknowledge or respond to it,” she said. “It was not until (President Muhammadu) Buhari came to power (in 2015) that Nigeria, and the world, woke up and smelt the coffee.”
With Boko Haram’s insurgency in its eighth year and showing little sign of ending, many aid agencies are thinking beyond just emergency aid, and considering how best to foster and improve long-term development and resilience-building efforts.

“The government is tackling the crisis on several fronts, not just handing out food parcels,” said Alakija. “We are focusing on rebuilding entire communities, so that people can go back to their homes, jobs, and resume their lives as normal.”

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Peter Obi Confirms Search of His Apartment by EFCC

Peter Obi

Davidson Iriekpen

A former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, has confirmed THISDAY’s exclusive report on Tuesday that his apartment was one of the many searched by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), following the discovery of N13.3 billion in a neighbouring apartment (Flat 7B) at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, by the commission last week.

In a follow-up to the information provided by the whistle blower who blew the lid on the cash found in Apartment 7B and further information that there was more cash stashed away in another apartment in the same luxury complex, the EFCC had obtained a warrant from the court to search all the flats in the building.

Accordingly, it notified all the occupants of the building that its operatives would search all the flats to ascertain the veracity of the information provided by the whistle blower who works in the complex.

By Monday, the commission had searched 21 of the apartments including those belonging to the former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, who developed the sky-rise residential building.

A statement on Tuesday by Obi’s media aide, Mr. Val Obienyem, said the former governor has confirmed the search by the EFCC of Flat 1 occupied by him in the building.

Responding to enquiries from the press, Obienyem, who revealed that the ex-governor’s primary residence is in Onitsha, Anambra State, he added that the apartment rented by Obi’s wife, Margaret, is usually used by the former governor anytime he is in Lagos.
Obienyem, who cautioned mischief makers against linking Obi to the cash haul, made it clear that the entire occupants of the building were also searched.

“Even though Mr. and Mrs. Obi had travelled to the UK and U.S. for speaking engagements, when he was informed of the search, he quickly sent the keys to the 4-bedroom apartment to the EFCC via courier today (yesterday).
“He even left instructions that we should allow them to also search his Onitsha residence should there be need for that.

“After a thorough search, nothing was found in the apartment,” Obienyem said.
Obienyem revealed that during the search, one of the operatives of the EFCC was overheard expressing doubt if the apartment had anything to do with Obi, citing the fact that it was the simplest in terms of furnishing and reflective of his ascetic lifestyle.

A source also revealed to THISDAY that Obi learnt of the search warrant obtained from the EFCC from his neighbour, Chairman/CEO of Zinox Technologies Limited, Mr. Leo Stan Ekeh, who has two children living in the apartment building.
One of his sons, Nnamdi, 24, who is a resident of Osborne Towers, is a budding entrepreneur and founder of the online shopping portal Yudala.

Ekeh reportedly called Obi at the weekend to inform him that the EFCC had searched his children’s flats and advised him to send his key from London so that his flat could be searched likewise.
Obi, THISDAY gathered, promptly asked his wife to send the key via courier to a family friend to let the EFCC operatives into his flat.
The Obis, it was gathered, neither keep maids nor housekeepers at the apartment and always lock it up when they are out of town.

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